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THE

SEXUAL HISTORY OF
THE WORLD WAR

THE SEXUAL HISTORY OF THE WORLD WAR

has been edited and translated into English
from the German work of

DR. MAGNUS HIRSCHFELD

"The World's Greatest Sanitarian, Psychosexual Physician and Crea-
tor of the Sexual Sciences."
Founder and Head of the Institute for Sexual Science, visited by
thousands of Physicians and Scientists from all over the world tor
purposes of study, research and experimentation.
Organizer of The Scientific-Humanistic Committee
Organizer of The International Congresses for Sexual Reform
Co-Founder of the Medical Society for Sexual Science
Co-Founder of the Journal of Sexual Science

Lecturer to thousands of professional circles and scientific institutes
in every civilized country of both the Orient and the Occident.

Author of some 187 learned works in the four special fields making
an entity of the Sexual Sciences: r. Sexual Biology; 2. Sexual
Pathology; 3. Sexual Sociology; 4. Sexual Ethnology for Physicians
and Students of Advanced Sex Science

Dr. Hirschfeld was assisted in this War Book by the following
World-Famous Physicians, Historians and Scientists

DR. ANDREAS GASPAR
DR. FRIEDRICH S. KRAUSS
DR. J. WEISSKOPF
CURT MORECK
DR. B. NEUFELD

DR. PAUL ENGLISCH
DR. EDUARD VON LISZT
DR. ERICH WULFFEN
HEINRICH WANDT
DR. J. R. SPINNER

and

DR. HERBERT LEWANDOWSKI

THE

SEXUAL HISTORY OF
THE WORLD WAR

DR. MAGNUS HIRSCHFELD

Founder and Director
of the Institute for Sexual Science

In Collaboration with
World-Famous Physicians, Scientists and Historians

Intended for circulation among Mature Educated Persons only

CADILLAC PUBLISHING CO.
NEW YORK

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

THE GREATEST
AMERICAN REFERENCE WORK
ON THE SEXUAL SCIENCES

ENCYCLOPAEDIA SEXUALIS
edited by the Eminent Physician and Medical Historian,

DR. VICTOR ROBINSON

in Collaboration with more than a Hundred Internation-
ally Known Medical, Legal and Scientific Authorities

is dedicated to

DR. IWAN BLOCH
and

DR. MAGNUS HIRSCHFELD

In his beautiful dedication,

dr. victor robinson says:

"Doctors Bloch and Hirschfeld were two of the foremost creators
of sexual science; their names appear frequently in this volume . . .
both accomplished work of enduring value for the welfare of the
human race. Their books were burnt [by the Hitler government]
and are not permitted to be read in their native land; where liberty
still survives, these books are held in honor. To the memory of our
departed friends we dedicate the Encyclopaedia Sexualis."

viii FOREWORD

theme, much more informative than many historical works and
memoirs of generals, since the latter generally pass by with super-
cilious silence just those relationships which appear so important

t0 We are very grateful to all those who have facilitated and aided
our work through supplying us with material. They are too numer-
ous to be mentioned here by name; but we must not omit to men-
tion one of them, namely, Mr. A. Wolff of Leipzig, who very gra-
ciously placed at our disposal his extremely large and rich collection
of war data, photographs, etc.

And so we offer this work to the unprejudiced reader as the first
modest contribution to the history of morals during the war, the
full and exhaustive treatment of which theme will only be possible
after many years of investigation and analysis.

Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld

Contents

INTRODUCTION 11

PART I

1. THE RELEASE OF SEXUAL RESTRAINTS 2 4

2. WAR WIVES AND IMMORALITY 3 2

3. EROTICISM OF NURSES 54

4. SENSUALITY IN THE TRENCHES 7°

5. VENEREAL DISEASES 9 2

6. WOMEN SOLDIERS AND FEMALE BATTALIONS . . . . IIO

7. HOMOSEXUALITY AND TRANSVESTTTISM I24

PART II

8. REGULATION OF ARMY BROTHELS I4I

9. PROSTITUTION BEHIND THE LINES

10. LUST IN THE CONQUERED AREAS I7I

11. CIVILIAN DEBAUCHERY BACK HOME ^7

12. GENITAL INJURIES, WAR EUNUCHS, ETC 2°5

13. SEX LIFE OF WAR PRISONERS 226

PART III

14. AMATORY ADVENTURES OF FEMALE SPIES 23^

15. EROTICISM BEHIND MILITARY DRILL .266

16. PROPAGANDA AND SEX LIES 272

17. THE BESTIALIZATION OF MAN 27&

18. SADISM, RAPE, AND OTHER ATROCITIES 299

19. POST-WAR REVOLUTION AND SEXUALITY 321

2 0. APPENDIX — U. S. STARTS CLEANUP OF CAMP FOLLOWERS . 342

Illustrations

THE POPULAR PARISIAN CONCEPTION OF WAR WIVES ... 44

UKRAINIAN WOMEN SOLDIERS rI7

A TYPICAL ARMY BROTHEL 149

THE POPULARITY OF AMERICAN SOLDIERS IN PARIS . . . . l62

AN AMERICAN RED CROSS POSTER 216

Introduction

THE SEXUAL HISTORY OF THE WORLD WAR

Moral Tendencies of Pre-War Period— Economic, Political and Erotic
Emancipation of Women— Revolution of Youth— Homosexual Women
Help Feminism— Erotic Types of Pre-War Women

NATURA non jacit Saltum. Nature does not make any jumps.
No matter how catastrophic the changes of the World War were,
we must regard these alterations as a continuation of previous de-
velopments. To be sure, the dimensions of the change were now
raised to the realm of the fantastic, but they were none the less
connected with conditions existing before the war. Hence, every
history of the World War, if it is to have any claim to complete-
ness, must start with the pre-history of that event, for in the latter
there are to be discerned all the explosive elements that led to the
disaster of July, 19 14. Without the economic competition of the
great capitalist states, without the imperialism unleashed by their
industrial and colonial policies, without the armaments of the great
European powers which had been piled up for decades and the
consequent economic and military competition, First World War
could never have broken out.

All these considerations, relating to the genesis of the World
War are, however, outside the limits of our work. But we are in-
terested in the question whether the extraordinary transformation
of morality that ensued during the war— the erotic relations be-
tween the sexes— was also prepared for and anticipated before the
war. For an extended treatment of this subject the interested reader
is referred to V. F. Calverton's book, Bankruptcy of Marriage;
but it may be worth while to summarize here a few of the more
important facts in this connection.

The bourgeois class, which came to power in the French revolu-
tion and achieved economic supremacy, brought with it its own
morality developed in the struggle with the feudal nobility and in
opposition to the morality of the latter. At the center of this social
morality, which reached its heyday at the beginning of the nine-

I2 INTRODUCTION

teenth century, stands capitalist property from which all the con-
cepts of virtue are derived. For the victorious bourgeoisie virtue
denoted thrift, economy, a simple manner of living, the commer-
cialization of the relationships of life, the inviolability of the erotic
ownership-rights to woman, regulated marriage and the consequent
sacredness of marriage itself, the eschewal of every extra-marital
intercourse, especially for woman whose sexuality was the prop-
erty of man to be given in exchange for the sustenance purveyed
by him, and the creation in prostitution as a safety valve for the
sexuality of man regarded as insuperable.

This patriarchal morality of the bourgeoisie which the armed
citoyen fought out at the beginning of the nineteenth century until
the revolutionary year of 1848, no longer holds his successor, the
modern bourgeois. Through the development of capitalism as a
result of unlimited competition and the unforeseen growth of tech-
nology, two changes took place; first the petit bourgeois, the real
bearer of bourgeois morality, was to a great extent proletanzed;
and on the other hand, for a small class of wealthy capitalists, the
trust magnates and wealthy potentates, there grew up, at the end
of the nineteenth century, the material possibility for a luxurious
way of life which overflowed the low banks of the primitive morality
of the citoyen. This revision was enacted in theory before the war,
which merely accelerated the process, and carried it to its conclusion.
In other words, the outbreak of the war fell at a time pregnant with
sultry anticipations which had partly destroyed the ancient values
and pronounced the death verdict upon them.

If we examine the relations of the sexes before the war, we see
a revolutionary shift, for the whole realm of sexuality is funda-
mentally different from that of the past. Whereas formerly sexuality
had in accordance with bourgeois concepts of chastity, been en-
veloped in a mystical darkness, there arose at the turn of the
century a tremendous current of thought, an erotic enlightenment
movement. This was a reaction against the earlier repression of
sexuality from society. We can best envisage the tremendous ad-
vances it made during the war, by inspecting the changed position
of woman. In so doing we have to deal with the phenomenon which
may be termed the erotic emancipation of woman.

A second line of development is the social and political equal-
ization of the sexes— a tremendous innovation in human history
which set its stamp upon the pre-war period and made it one of the
important eras in the history of cultural evolution. This tendency

INTRODUCTION

also was enormously furthered by the war. It is logically connected
with erotic emancipation and, like the latter, appears most clearly
in the new position of woman. In the nineteenth century this
tendency was called the emancipation of women but today it is
termed feminism. Although this movement was found here and there
before the war, especially in England, the war accelerated its
development and made possible the rapid realization of its goal—
the complete equalization of the sexes and the creation of a new
sexual morality. Judge Lindsey regards the revolution of youth as
the most important consequence of the post-war period, from the
moral point of view. But we wish to point out that this revolution
is confined to modern America and Russia and therefore we regard
as much more significant the profound and far-reaching revolution
of the modern woman. One might say that the successful rebellion
of the female sex against century-old enslavement is the historic
act of our century and may serve as the boundary between two
ages of the world, that of the enslavement of the women, and that
of the equality of the sexes.

These two tendencies, erotic emancipation of feminism, point
to a third line of development which runs parellel with them and
issues from a historical tendency that also came to expression before
the war, that is, the economic equalization, the increasing participa-
tion of women in production. Since our whole conception proceeds
from the economic elements in human society, we must look upon
the transformation in the economic substructure of society as the
fundamental factor and as the real explanation for both of the
other phenomena.

The increasing participation of woman in economic production
is due to the nature of industrial capitalism: industry constantly
advancing by new technical inventions needed more labor power
and forced ever greater masses to participate in production. This
increase in labor power, so necessary for the development of indus-
trialism, was eked out by working women, both from the city and
villages, who deserted the farms and were sucked up by the great
industrial centers (even at the beginning of the century Verhaeren
had spoken of "villes tentaculaires") . We are only interested in
the reasons which led women to participate in industry. Modern
industrialism creates mass production and needs an ever increasing
mass of consumers if it is to get rid of its products. Since, in this
way, ever more classes of society participate in the fruits of civiliza-
tion there comes about, to some degree at least, an equalization

I4 INTRODUCTION

of the needs of all strata of society. Needs which had formerly been
alien to all the lower classes were artificially created. The laborer's
wage, which, in accordance with the law of supply and demand,
always circulates around the peak necessary for his own sustenance
and scarcely ever goes beyond this, was added to by his wife who
left housework to work for wages in industry. Otherwise, despite
the cheapness of manufactured articles, the laborer could not satisfy
those new needs. The entry of woman into economic life is quite
advantageous for capitalism, because, in all branches of production,
woman's labor power is cheaper. And the great participation of
woman in production was constantly increased by the technological
inventions of the machine age. The stage of early capitalism in
which industry (in contrast to the guilds) was able to get along
with cheap and unskilled labor and hence could make great use
of women is repeated on a high level of industrial development as
the complicated productive processes are now performed by machines
—the steel idols of fully-developed industrialism. The comparative
physical weakness of woman and her lack of technical education is
of little importance in the twentieth century. In ever greater num-
bers women left the home and entered economic life; and parallel
to this there went the pauperization of the middle classes, the petit
bourgeoisie, which was ground to bits between the two millstones
of capitalism (Grosskapitalismus) and the proletariat, for the society
that belonged to this middle class were also unable to gratify the
increased needs of industrialization save through the growing par-
ticipation of women in business life. Daughters of the middle class
swarmed into the intellectual callings as soon as the way was opened
for them. Office girls, saleswomen, doctors, lawyers and civil service
officials now entered into competition with men in these fields. A
great number of vocations, which had formerly been looked upon as
unfit for women, were successively conquered by women. Even
before the war, there was created a situation in the labor market
where the old distinction between women's work or professions had
disappeared.

Everybody knows how the war affected the participation of
women in industry. For in every European land the protraction
of hostilities meant that greater masses of men would be drawn
from work to economically unproductive war. The first months
of the war saw a great rise in the need for labor power. Under such
circumstances woman entered practically every branch of produc-
tive activity so that she virtually achieved economic emancipation.

INTRODUCTION r5

The legal impediments to women's work in some European states
were not eliminated until after the war, but, just the same, during
the war women occupied positions considered purely masculine,
and often not compelled by economic need. This economic emanci-
pation, achieved so easily, was the ground on which political, legal
and social emancipation summarized under the "women's move-
ment" (Frauenbewegung) could flourish. To be sure, much earlier
there had been a movement for emancipation on political grounds
but it had little influence. The success of any movement for the
emancipation of women had to wait for the increasing participation
of woman in economic life. Consequently the struggle for the
political enfranchisement of women entered a decisive change in
the first decade of our century. As a result of the increased economic
equalization, the movement for the political enfranchisement of
women was accelerated.

Feminism and the woman's movement are permeated in the most
diverse ways with erotic factors. The great suffragettes of earlier
days, those who had achieved importance because of their espousal
of a new ideal of woman beyond that which was held to be
dictated by nature and desired by God, were at the same time the
protagonists of freedom from the shackles of conventional morality.
Indeed it is not without its piquancy that these female geniuses
were much less protagonists of woman's rights than of erotic free-
dom. For that which the nineteenth century termed the emancipa-
tion of women, the women who have achieved world fame have
done very little. From Aspasia to Mme. Curie, or Eleanora Duse
few women have fought so that the privileges which their own
genius assured to them might become the right of every woman.
George Sand was perhaps the only one who in her books and in
her personal relations was an emancipationist and demanded for
all women that right of which she made such frequent use — of
acting, living and dressing like a man. However, with regard to
George Sand, there is scarcely any doubt that as far as her work was
concerned, she was really a disguised man and Weininger has cor-
rectly pointed out that in her rich and changeful vita sexualis
she always preferred feminine men. (We are indebted to Magnus
Hirschfeld for a scientific understanding of the personality of
George Sand whom he classifies as a transverstitic metatropist.)

But as long as economic emancipation of women was absent,
freedom was confined to a few exceptional women, who as early
as the nineteenth century termed themselves emancipated. E. F. W.

l6 INTRODUCTION

Eberhard has attempted in his book, Erotic Foundations of the
Emancipation of Woman, to explain the women's movement from
the point of view of the erotic attributes of women. But, aside
from the fact that these attributes are by no means constant, as
appears in the change from type of modern women (since every
period creates its own types), such a conception of the historical
transformation of feminism is without ground. Nor is he right in
assuming that the rise of the women's movement is to a large part
due to the activities of homosexual women; rather must one say
that the women's movement, which became active through the
economic transformation, in certain cases, drew women with homo-
sexual inclinations into the camp of the suffragettes from purely
erotic motives. In his work on homosexuality in 1914, Dr. Magnus
Hirschfeld says the following concerning this point:

"Through their virile characteristics, independence, interest in
public questions, their developed understanding on the one hand,
and their lack of family ties on the other, they appear destined to
advance to positions of leadership. As a matter of fact, we need the
homosexual woman in all women's groups, social or professional,
and they are of extreme importance in fighting for emancipation
and independence. Naturally we must not assume that the latter
are based entirely, or even primarily, on homosexual elements, but,
none the less, the connections between it and female homosexuality
are so numerous because the female yearnings, in accordance with
their natural capacities, participate as the pioneers in the struggle
for the independence of woman from man."

This same writer, Eberhard, has directed our attention to the
importance of female sadism in emancipation and has termed
women's sadistic desire to rule, the cause of their emancipation and
the lasciviousness connected with it. This may be psychologically
true, but it is historically false. Neither the desire for power, nor
sadism, nor other erotic motives of the female psyche can be re-
garded' as the "cause" of this movement. They are only incentives,
subjective motivations, illusions, desires and passions, through which
a historic-economic necessity comes to expression, in this case the
equalization of the sexes. Of course Eberhard, in keeping with the
anti-feminist tendency of his book, exaggerates the homosexual
and sadistic tendencies of participants in the women's movement;
but, none the less, the role which these and other erotic impulses
played, are not negligible, especially in view of the fact that all the
female protagonists of feminism were clear on the point that

INTRODUCTION

political emancipation would go hand in hand with a greater sexual
freedom. Moreover, it cannot be denied that the erotic freedom
thus sought after was frequently of a tribadic or sadistic kind.

The progress of feminism and the participation of women in
production resulted in a masculinization of the contemporary type
of woman. Even sadistic moments which here point back to the
fundamental antipathy of the sexes came to clearer expression in
the economic competition which woman offered to man in profes-
sional and industrial life. As women displaced men more and more
during the war, Dr. W. Stekel asserted that they were using the
war to capture the positions of men and perhaps to keep them
forever. The wild outbreaks of certain suffragettes against the male
sex are notorious and Eberhard has collated curious examples of
this in his book; but, of course, it was primarily the homosexual
wing of the women's movement which expressed this antipathy
to men.

In other ways, also, the women's movement was connected with
the problems of sexual life. Free love, or at least the bursting of
bourgeois morality barriers, as far as love and marriage are con-
cerned, was from the start one of the important points of the
women's movement. To be sure, the political and erotic liberation
(which, in their turn, are based on economics) first became clear
after the changes had taken place in the economic substructure of
society. The majority of the women did not wish to become free
in much the same way that in the American Civil War a large
number of Negro slaves were hostile to abolition of slavery. In the
same way, the fundamental participation of woman in production,
which first made possible political-social as well as erotic liberation,
the purely economic grounds of which we have just considered
above — grew up without the efforts of women and, to a large extent,
in spite of them. The new forms of capitalist production eventu-
ated in a political transformation which reached its pinnacle in the
emancipation of women; and corresponding to these new forms (and
connected no less strongly with the economic basis), there took
place an erotic revolution which spread over the whole realm of
morality. What the twentieth century accomplished in changes in
the erotic realm is nothing more than a new stage of capitalist
development initiated in economic life and accelerated by the war.

This erotic liberation expresses itself most strongly in the changed
erotic position of woman. This erotic revolution was enormously
advanced by scientific investigation into the realm of sexual life,

1 8 INTRODUCTION

hitherto shamefully concealed. The first herald in the struggle for
the liberation from sexual prejudices was, as is well known, Krafft-
Ebing who was soon followed by men like Havelock Ellis, Forel,
Freud, Magnus Hirschfeld, Iwan Bloch, etc. No one wishes to
deny that there had been protagonists of erotic liberation at an
earlier period, brave souls who had felt the constriction of bour-
geois morality and had sought to overcome them, as "Young
Germany" which had fought for "The emancipation of the flesh."
But without the change in the economic structure, no such move-
ment could have achieved importance.

Our generation is well acquainted with how these changes in-
fluenced woman, not only in public life, but in the erotic realm.
The bourgeois morality of the whole nineteenth century sentenced
the woman to passivity which was the highest female virtue in
love but which, in reality, as Calverton has well said, was the price
of her economic subservience to man. In this way there was attrib-
uted to women a need to lean upon someone for support, which
really corresponded to actual life (at least so far as the women of
the higher social classes were concerned). All the female types of
the past century, from Balzac to Ibsen, are, with slight exceptions,
constituted of such traits of character. At the turn of the century,
however, a change began to take place. Female types are generally
created by art and literature which make use of their privilege of
idealization in such a way that they clearly express the demands
which man makes upon the woman of his period. Every age has
one or more such female types just as, according to Taine, every
period has its own ideal of man. The various types of women are
the erotic ideal-forms of a period, equipped with all the erotic
advantages and merits which appear to the males of that time as
worthy of adoration and desire but which, as a matter of fact, no
woman, not even the "representative woman," actually possesses.

In the nineteenth century all the female types, until the very last
decades, reflect the solid bourgeois morality. But Ibsen's Nora and
her sisters feel the constriction of bourgeois morality and yearn
for liberation from the compulsions and repressions of marriage.
At the beginning of our century the attitude of woman became
more revolutionary and more threatening to the still regnant bour-
geois morality as can be seen from the new female types. That fine
historian of morals, Moreck, has listed three such types of the pre-
war period: "the grande-dame," "the demi-vierge" (half virgin)

INTRODUCTION

and the "Lulu" type. A fourth type, that of the suffragette, he
regards as a variation of the half virgin— which, we think, is incor-
rect because the suffragette was not essentially an erotic type, but
one serving the social and economic emancipation even though, as
we have seen above, she might have been moved by various erotic
impulses. Naturally these three types do not exhaust the change in
the nature of woman in the decade and a half before the war but
are just a few examples, which might be increased at will.

Frequently found in literature of the first decade of the twentieth
century, is the type fo the modern adulteress, whom the dramatists,
and especially writers of French farces, have represented in the
most varied triangle comedies. For this type, the limitations of
bourgeois morality, which come to expression in marriage, are no
longer sacrosanct but, none the less, still worthy of attention and
regard. These prohibitions are broken without qualms of conscience
yet the appearance of the old form is anxiously maintained and
the social consequence of adultery, divorce, is carefully avoided.
This type of adulteress indicates that the bourgeois woman (for
mostly we are concerned with the woman of this class and her moral
attitudes which influenced women of the other classes too, although
not greatly, as the working woman and the aristocratic woman were
living under different economic circumstances) was beginning to
carry the institution of marriage ad absurdum, without economically
being able to do without her husband. What is decisive in the case
of these women is the frivolous lightness with which the woman
transgressed the command of marital fidelity. Adultery, which in
Mme. Bovary's time had still been a tragic problem, now became
more and more a sex game.

These sex games are also indulged in by half virgins, whom one
might designate paradoxically as unmarried adulteresses. The demi-
virgin abides by the barriers of bourgeois morality, continues to
live with her bourgeois family and anxiously guards her physical
intactness as the insurance policy protecting her for marriage.
Corresponding to this type of demi-vierge, created by Prevost,
there are a number of similar literary types, the Nixchen, the stisse
U'ddel, and others who reflect a similar stage in the erotic develop-
ment of modern woman.

The last pre-war type mentioned by Moreck, the "Lulu" type,
is the literary personification, as her creator Wedekind says, of one
perfectly free from inhibitions. She is the woman who, no longer

2o INTRODUCTION

disturbed by erotic conventions, has become transmogrified from
a passive object of lust to an insatiable demon demanding the right
to free and unlimited choice of loves hitherto denied her.

Another type of woman whose literary exemplars are much more
rooted in reality and who has been of tremendous importance in
the erotic liberation of woman, is the woman nihilist, the Russian
co-ed, the precursor of emancipation in Europe. Her influence upon
the development of a new type of woman in Europe was already
felt before the war, but became more important later. Significantly
enough, she was the first to wear bobbed hair— symbolic of eco-
nomic, political and erotic emancipation of women.

That the increasing participation of woman in industry, her entry
into the struggle for existence, and her insight into material prob-
lems of vocational life had to change the erotic type of woman
will certainly not surprise the reader. It is obvious that economic
independence had to change woman's character. The wage-earner or
professional woman has more before her than the sole possibility
of marriage. No longer is she economically dependent on man,
but can now choose not only to whom she will be married but
whether she wishes to marry at all, or earn her own bread. As a
result, the passivity, which distinguished her character for centuries,
was now lost. Economic independence gave woman courage for
sexual freedom and the increase in extra-marital intercourse went
hand in hand with the demand for the unmarried woman's right
to a child, long ago enunciated by feminism. In this way there
arose the greater freedom of sex life among girls and women,
economically independent.

The female types which the war brought forth, must be judged
from the erotic realm, even though they seem to draw life from the
economic and social status only. Besides the women who went into
industry during the war there were also the war wife, war bride,
the nurse, the halting-station girl, etc.; all of them rooted in the
change in social and economic conditions of life. We shall return
later to the transformations which the female psyche underwent
during the war and as a result of it. Woman, who, now convinced
that she was able to substitute for man, could perform work which
men had hitherto performed, now swept off the prejudice that
woman needs someone to lean upon. She began to stand upon her
own feet and claimed her rights in the erotic realm as well. We
cannot overlook the accelerating effect of the war in this connection,

INTRODUCTION

just as, on the other hand, we must not exaggerate this effect and
believe that the war induced a sudden erotic revolution which had
no preparation in previous conditions. Perhaps its greatest im-
portance lies in the fact that in addition to the girls and women
of the proletariat whose moral deportment had of old deviated from
the prescriptions of bourgeois morality, it now affected other classes
of society the women of which had remained untouched by the slow
change of morality before the war. In this way the moral trans-
formation of the war became general and affected all classes. In
an essay, entitled "Women of the Present," Ernst Fischer has said
the following concerning the women of the war period:

"Women had been taught to see in man their supporter, their
bread-winner, the head of their family. Now suddenly the men
were snatched away from them and against their will they were
'emancipated.' Women had been indoctrinated with the 'female
virtue,' femininity, subservience, self-denial, in short, the virtues of
all the oppressed and the socially inferior; now suddenly they were
compelled to act the part of men and to shift for themselves and
for their children. The demands of the suffragettes, which had for-
merly been mocked and jeered at, were now fulfilled in the name
of the 'great period' (the war)."

To sum up. Everywhere we see the same phenomenon: in the
development of the pre-war times there were tendencies which
were slowly ripening and which, as a result of the war, were tre-
mendously accelerated and matured over night, so to speak. The
war burst upon humanity like a hurricane and together with mil-
lions of human lives it swept away prejudices which had already
been tottering. The dammed-up instincts, which had frequently
broken through the moral repressions that were no longer regarded
as sacred, rushed out in a veritable moral chaos which reached its
peak, curiously enough, not during the war but in the first post-
war years. The war created nothing new in the realm of morals
no matter how greatly it accelerated the tempo of the evolution.
The new forms of industrial capitalism which no longer could
permit the female half of mankind to remain economically unpro-
ductive, the political and social equalization of both sexes, the
disintegration of the bourgeois morality and the consequent moral
and erotic liberation were tendencies that had been active since
the turn of the century. It is true that the war helped us get rid
of old rubbish ever so much sooner but the old order would have

INTRODUCTION

passed anyhow. Was it necessary that millions of lives had to be
paid for this? What the war brought was nothing more than
spiritual and moral emptiness and brutalization, a sudden unchain-
ing of atavistic impulses which for five years stormed through the
world unimpeded and constituted the terrible forms in which the
historical necessity of a moral transformation came to expression.

THE

SEXUAL HISTORY OF
THE WORLD WAR

Part One

Chapter 1

THE RELEASE OF SEXUAL RESTRAINTS

War-Enthusiasm — Its Libidinous Background— The Sexual Impulse at
Outbreak of the War— Nymphomaniac Effects— Erotic Influence of the
Uniform — Mass Delirium — Eroticism and Cruelty— Viewpoint of Soci-
ology and Psychoanalysis

NO one who was alive at that time will ever forget those feverish
days when the war broke out. The masses poured through the
streets jubilantly, aroused to a blazing hatred, an enormous beast
ready to hurl itself upon the enemy and bring it death and disaster.
It was only a very extraordinary poet who was able to say that the
summer in which the war broke out saw man at his lowest. Not
much good is done to the cause of pacifism by attributing the mass
paroxysm of the first days of the war to motives that are all too
practical. Undoubtedly there were among the myriads, who in
Paris demanded a march upon Berlin, in Berlin, the destruction of
France, in Vienna and Budapest the death of Serbia, paid agents of
the war propaganda who bellowed vociferously their pro-war in-
clinations. It is also true that, in the street-brawls directed against
foreigners who were nationals of enemy countries, more than
patriotism was at stake for property was very frequently stolen. It
is also true that in these mobs which tore through the streets,
shrieking their hurrahs, there were youths, irresponsible elements
who are not absent in any metropolitan mob, who took delight in
rows as they had nothing to be afraid of. But to regard all the
enthusiasm for war as due to paid agents, pilferers or rowdies is a
contradiction of the facts. The truth is that in those days there
were only a few who were immune to the mass psychosis and
practically everyone was enthusiastic for war. It was an outbreak
of mass insanity, an explosion that had been experienced earlier in
world's history and even been described (by Zola, for example)
but which had never fanned such a world conflagration. The en-

THE RELEASE OF SEXUAL RESTRAINTS

thusiasm as described by Glaser in his Class of 1902 was shared by
almost everyone, and pacifists must not delude themselves in this.
It was a sudden release from a tension that had been felt for years.

The leader of the Austrian social democracy, Viktor Adler, who
until the last moment fought for peace, declared at an international
convention of his party, shortly after the outbreak of the war,
that despite all the propaganda against it, war was still popular
among the proletariat. Millions of men shouted the heartfelt "At
last" almost rapturously expressed by Count Appanyi in the Hun-
garian Parliament when he learnt that war had been declared.

During the days of mobilization, a merchant made a speech in
the streets of Vienna and expressed the opinion that without the
war everything would have collapsed, that peace was no longer
tolerable. This man spoke from his soul; and a great many others
spoke of an unbearable burden which had pressed upon the world
and which had suddenly been lightened at the outbreak of the
war. What was this pressure and why was it unbearable? In order
to answer this question we must descend into the dark realm of the
war-instinct, for it was primarily that which came to expression
in the joy of war, which permitted these same instincts fulfillment.
Particularly must we talk about the instinct of struggle, the lust
for blood, which is an ancient heritage of mankind. Nicolai has
shown us how this is connected with war. After the eighteenth
century there was no longer any method of killing men legitimately.
There were a few remainders of the ancient bloody games, such
as in bullfights in Spain, duels among the students in Germany,
or certain sects in Russia which killed some of their communicants,
but aside from these stray relics of an earlier day, the French
revolution had put an end to the possibility of gratifying the
instinct for blood so deeply rooted in human beings. The only
device that remained was war, and hence all these primitive im-
pulses concentrated upon it; and it was this instinct for struggle
which celebrated the possibility of fulfillment in the ensuing combat.

We have now to point out certain relationships between the
outbreak of the war and eroticism. Attempts have been made to
explain war as such from the sexual impulse. Two years before
the World War the Italian Gallo undertook to do this in a work
which omitted any consideration of the economic and social con-
ditions of war and attributed it directly to sex factors (following
Horace who had said that, even before the times of Helen, sexual
lust had been the cause of grievous wars). To our way of thinking,

26 THE SEXUAL HISTORY OF THE WORLD WAR

there is no war without property and therefore in explaining any
war the economic considerations will come first and only secon-
darily factors derived from the realm of sex. Of course, the sub-
jective and the erotic factors must not be overlooked but they do
not call forth any war; they merely determine the forms under
which the economic social necessity of war and the economic
transformation caused by it will come to expression. It is doubtful
whether there was ever a war for a purely sexual reason. The
ancient saga of the Trojan war may, in reality, have been due to
the expansion of Greek commerce into Asia Minor. Of course,
there have been and remain individual combats for a woman;
among certain animals, particularly the deer, bloody struggles for
the female of the species are very common, but these have nothing
to do with war, certainly not with modern capitalist war.

This does not mean that at the outbreak of the war eroticism
was not intimately bound up with the war-enthusiasm. For example,
the attempt was made to arouse a combination of the feeling of
vengeance with erotic undertones by representing to the Austro-
Hungarian soldiers the wife of Franz Ferdinand, who had been
assassinated with her husband, as a sort of saint of the war whose
innocent blood would have to be avenged. All war propaganda used
such slogans with an erotic undertone. It may be asked whether
all ideas for which one can become enthusiastic to the point of
making the last sacrifice are not ultimately erotic, that is, colored
by the unconscious with a libidinous streak. Psycho-analysis has
taught this very doctrine in its concept of sublimation; but with-
out going into further detail it is clear that the outbreak of the
war was not evaluated logically but emotionally.

Another question in this regard is how far and to what degree did
the outbreak of the war and the enthusiasm for war affect eroticism?
According to H. Fehlinger, the outbreak of the war induced a
weakening of the sexual impulse. Had Fehlinger, in the early days
of the war, visited the brothels of his merry South German native
city he would certainly not have concluded that the sex impulse
had been diminished, for these institutions were filled with all
kinds of soldiers. His assumption that the great enthusiasm for
war might have the effect of weakening the sexual drive just didn't
work out in the realm of fact. The opposite was true, particularly
as far as women were concerned. The great experience of the
outbreak of the war, the tremendous emotional excitement that it
brought, exercised a stimulating effect upon the women of every

THE RELEASE OF SEXUAL RESTRAINTS 27

land and appears to have raised their need of love considerably.
Among other witnesses of this is the French physician, Dr. Huot,
who pointed to the numerous French women who, out of patriotism,
had given themselves promiscuously to soldiers departing to the
field of battle. These cases can much less be regarded as patriotism
than as a sort of war nymphomania which was observed in every
land. This circumstance goes to prove that woman reacted to the
war with an increase of her libido. There are numerous examples
of this but we will quote one article of the journalist, E. Erdely,
concerning Budapest and its women:

"In the first weeks of the great excitement and in the ensuing
months, women fell into a feverish delirium of enthusiasm, as
though the senses had, with one move, thrown off the repressive
chains of all social and economic scruples. It seemed natural that
the same emotional experience which expressed itself, among men,
in the lust for murder, in women showed itself in the madness of
corporeal surrender. No statistics were made on this subject, but
the consequences prove that the enthusiastic girls jumped in an
almost insane way into the arms of the men departing for the
battlefield. For in those early weeks, every man who wore a uni-
form seemed to be the exalted betrothed of death; and who had
the power to resist the supplicating word and the pleading glance
of such a one? Never did women commit so many sins as in that
autumn of the mass delirium."

Many sociologists have held war to be an elementary expression
of human nature, for example, Gumplowicz, Jerusalem, Steinmetz,
etc. This is rather surprising in view of the fact that society has
made so much progress. Orthodox psychology has paid little atten-
tion to the spiritual determinance of war but psychoanalysis has
provided us with numerous insights on this subject. At the begin-
ning of the war, Freud wrote a book in which he treated the
problem of war and death. On the basis of his investigation of
neuroses, he came to the conclusion that, in reality, civilization
had not removed the evil inherent in human nature. At its core,
human nature consists of instinctive impulses which are the same
in all men, and are directed toward the satisfaction of certain
primitive needs. Under the influence of internal factors and ex-
ternal ones as well, these evil desires are sublimated or refined. The
normal pressure of culture does not produce pathological results,
but comes to expression in various malformations of character and
in the constant readiness of the repressed impulses to leap out

28 THE SEXUAL HISTORY OF THE WORLD WAR

whenever there seems to be an opportunity. Whoever is com-
pelled to live in accordance with rules that are not his instinctive
inclinations is living, from the psychological point of view, as a
hypocrite. It is undeniable that our contemporary culture has
furthered the development of such hypocrisy. War is an opportunity
for throwing off, for a while, all the irksome repressions which
culture imposes and for satisfying temporarily all the repressed
desires. The psychoanalyst, Ernest Jones, has pointed to the fact
that ultimately the sublimation of our thoroughly egoistic and anti-
social instincts into ethical and social aspirations and achievements,
in other words, the domestication of our primitive instincts, are the
precondition for any cultural development. It is as though indi-
viduals came to an agreement against their will— to behave properly
for otherwise punishments of various sorts will be imposed upon
them. Like Nietzsche's cultural philistine they obey an ideal which
is not their own and hence it is understandable that their obedience
is never perfect. Hence they harbor a greater or less internal conflict
although this is, to a large extent, unconscious.

It may be difficult to distinguish between man who has sub-
limated his instincts, and the majority of men who abide by the
prescriptions of civilization against their will and constantly feel
the weight of civilization upon them. However, as soon as the
social pressure is removed, the difference between them becomes
exceedingly plain; the attitude of the first type remains practically
unchanged whereas that of the second rapidly becomes worse. The
experience of psychoanalysis agrees perfectly with the testimony
of war that refinement of primitive impulses has progressed far
less than we flatter ourselves into thinking; and that the great
majority of mankind belongs to the second groups, whose sub-
limation is more apparent than real. This enables us to understand
why during war man can express certain psychological traits which
otherwise are repressed. The impulsive character of man, his faulty
sublimation, and the possibility of slipping back or regressing to
earlier stages of his development, give us the means of understand-
ing psychologically what happens during the war. The question that
must be asked is whether men really wanted the World War and
actually affirmed it; and our answer to that question is "Yes."
Emil Ludwig may have been right when he said that three capable
statesmen could have prevented the war, but this leads us to the
problem of leadership and hence to the consideration of war from
the point of view of crowds and masses. In general, the viewpoint is

THE RELEASE OF SEXUAL RESTRAINTS

current today that we are living in an epoch of collective mass
powers where the super-historical heroes of Carlyle have no place.
But mass psychology and the personality of the hero are two aspects
of one phenomenon: the effect of one upon the many. We have
already seen that the single soul has within it the inclination to
warlike conduct, the potentialities for warlike tendencies are latent
within it; and we now must take into consideration the role of
mass factors. In his description of the characteristics of crowds,
Le Bon has shown that they have certain characters which are
different from that of single personalities, particularly increased
affectivity and diminished rationality. But why this should be so
remained a mystery until Frued pointed out that the peculiar
phenomena of mass psychology were the manifest unconscious of
the mass come to expression. Freud showed that every artificial
mass, as an army or church, by the identification of all the members
of the mass with one another and the setting up of the leader in the
place of the ego ideal, produced a libido relationship which was
the real cement of the mass. The mass is the resurrection of the
primitive horde, just as in every man the primitive is retained
unconsciously. So in every group of men the primeval horde may
come to expression. Insofar as mass formations habitually control
men, we recognize the continuation of the primeval horde within
it. Furthermore, the leader of the mass is always the feared primi-
tive father; the mass always wants to be ruled with unlimited power
and desires to submit to such authority.

Freud's consideration of this subject culminated in the statement
that mass phenomena are, so to speak, legitimized forms of indulg-
ing instincts which otherwise must be punished. In the mass
phenomena the repressed instincts come to expression. Despite all
restrictions and limitations which are placed upon the ego we find
that human societies have made provision for a periodic breaking
through of these prohibitions as is shown by the institution of
festivals which originally were nothing more than excesses en-
joined by the law, and to this liberation they owe their merry
character. The Saturnalia of the Romans and our present carnivals
are in this respect identical with the festivals of the primitives
which would be characterized by excesses of every kind and the
transgression of commandments normally held to be sacred.

From this point of view, war was a horrible equivalent, an out-
break of instinct in sanctioned form. That which the state pro-
hibited to the individual, it permitted to the mass. The American

30 THE SEXUAL HISTORY OF THE WORLD WAR

psychologist, William James, had spoken of "the moral equivalent
of war" by which he meant that so long as the conditions of peace
time would not give to the individual sufficient satisfactions and
advantageous experiences, war would keep its attractive power as
the highest opportunity for the intoxication of the senses. There
is undoubtedly a profound insight in this view, War, like alcohol,
will maintain its psychological function until another social struc-
ture will be found to provide human beings with more possibility
of satisfying their wishes. Even if man is by his nature "evil," he is,
none the less, susceptible to change through social and individual
transformations of life as has been proved in the cases of many
individuals. Dissatisfaction with peace gives birth to war. Those
who, disappointed and desperate, decay in the treadmill of life will
always greet war as a salavation from dullness and misery.

We know that every war mobilizes all the impulses of cruelty;
war, taken as a whole, is one great act of cruelty. The investiga-
tions of psychoanalysis have made us familiar with the connections
between cruelty and sadism. There can be no doubt that the
cruelty which war demands and sanctifies was consciously or
unconsciously affirmed by those persons who had retained in their
instinctive life the primeval sadistic impulse for which they had
found no satisfactory activity in peace times. Abnormal sexual
attitudes and acts of cruelty, resulting from them, are found in
peace times, too; but war, as legalized mass-murder, offers incen-
tives and possibilities and even premiums for the evil instincts.
Without the sexual background, the numerous, meaningless acts of
cruelty of the World War are incomprehensible.

A second motive, also belonging to the realm of sexual forces, is
the effect that the war had upon the sexual life of so many people.
Here, also, there is reflected the dissatisfaction with the conditions
of peace which we have already described. How many there are
who live in ties which afford them meager satisfaction from the
sexual point of view and demand a repression of their needs! One
need think only of the dominant form of contemporary marriage
which seldom purveys an erotic harmony for the partner. The
war affords a tremendous opportunity to pull off these shackles
temporarily and, at least in anticipation, to indulge infinite erotic
desires. Everybody who was acquainted with sexual dissatisfaction
or misery of any kind greeted the outbreak of war from this point
of view; and from innumerable such dissatisfactions with peace,
their issued a psychological attitude which was receptive to war.

THE RELEASE OF SEXUAL RESTRAINTS 31

In the depths of the human soul, eroticism, cruelty and the mad
desire to destroy, are all intimately connected. There are certain
inter-relationships between the negative forces of destruction and
the positive might of Eros. For every repression and violation of
Eros can, under certain conditions, produce an emergence of the
destructive sadistic powers. The sexual misery of peace time, the
hypocritical morality of the ruling social classes, pervert the natural
impulses and finally bursts out in aberrant reactions. The liberation
of violated impulses through the war, the tremendous expression
which they had never been able to achieve in peace time, pro-
duced a tremendous intoxication which carried men with it beyond
all reason. The primeval combat of the powers of life and death,
which is forever being fought anew, came to an armistice. How
will the primeval enmity of both these powers end up? Despite
all the sobering and disappointing experiences, we have faith in the
perseverance of the productive forces in the world. And so we close
with the words of Freud: "And therefore we must hope that the
second of the two divine forces, namely, the eternal Eros will make
a great effort to maintain itself in the struggle with its equally
immortal enemy."

Chapter 2

WAR WIVES AND IMMORALITY

Female Suffering— Masculinization of Women—War Marriages— Attacks
on Foreigners— Prostitutes Purvey Military Supplies— Legalization of
Free Unions— Infidelity of War Wives— Increase of Illegitimate Births-
Pandering and Abortion— Preventive Measures Against Disease— Punish-
ments for Infidelity— Neuroses and Psychoses— Female Continence and its
Results— Lesbianism and Other Perversions— Auto-Erotic Aberrations—
"Cessatio Mensum"— Compulsory Sexual Abstinence— Increased Love
Needs of Soldiers' Wives— Love Episodes with Prisoners-of-W ar—lhe
Cowards' League— Public Flogging of Faithless Wives— Rape of Men by
Women— Sapphic Relations During Husbands' Absence

TO each age and sex group of society the war brought special
sufferings. The men who were its cannon fodder had their bodies
crippled, burnt, and torn to fragments by bombs and shrapnel; the
children went to rack and ruin in vast masses as a result of the
blockade, undernourishment and general neglect; and the women—
what fearful sufferings and sacrifices did it impose upon them!

The fearful effects of the incredible catastrophe of the World
War showed themselves so comprehensively in all walks of life, in
individuals and society, that we must restrict ourselves to just a few
clearly defined mass phenomena. In the case of women it must be
emphasized that these drastic effects touched the women of the
higher strata of society hardly at all, or at least very little. To be
sure, there were women for whom the war, not merely at the out-
set but during its whole bloody duration, was a unique sensation, a
novelty, a nerve titillation, but these women belonged exclusively
to the privileged classes. As far as the working woman is concerned,
we have every reason to see in her one of the most pitiable, be-
cause most helpless, victims of the war.

It cannot be denied, of course, that during the first weeks of the
mass hypnosis of the war not even the woman of the lower classes
escaped the influence of mob suggestion. However for her the
awakening from this delirium was the more shocking. Then she
became aware of clamorous and bitter demands of reality— having
to substitute for her husband in the economic field; fighting the
battle for existence without any preparation and with very insuffi-
cient equipment. , .

In the first period after the outbreak of the war, the patriotic
enthusiasm of women frequently went to the most ridiculous
extremes. It was in truth that sort of an emotional expression of the

WAR WIVES AND IMMORALITY

female psyche which the Berlin gynecologist, Dr. Max Hirsch, has
correctly termed paradox reaction. This emotional gush was the
more remarkable since it ran counter to what it ordinarily re-
garded as the original reaction of women. In this period women
demonstrated the most incredible readiness to part with, nay to
send away their beloved ones, husbands and sons. The motives for
this reaction were quite diverse: patriotism, feeling of duty, greed,
etc., but usually it was, paradoxically enough, what is generally
regarded as real mother-love or husband-love which led the women
to drive their husbands or sons into the battlefield— a love which
expressed itself in a desire to prevent the stigma of delayed service
for the fatherland from resting upon the beloved. In addition there
might have been a form of romantic hero-worship. Whatever the
dominant reason, it was these very women who frequently suffered
most under the conflict which love and sacrifice imposed upon
them. Conditions of nervous excitation and depression to the point
of melancholy were the consequences which reached their highest
point in those cases where the given man, who had been virtually
pushed into the war by his wife or mother, died in battle and the
woman was left to reproach herself with feelings of guilt at having
been instrumental in his death.

It is well known that women in every land played a large role in
the agitation against foreigners, particularly in the large cities,
which broke out with the declaration of war. We might adduce
two examples of this sort of thing. In Breslau a British teacher of
languages, Harold Whyte, was denounced by his own wife and
brought before the martial court because he had written an article
for English newspapers on the subject of German mobilization.
When the judge inquired why she had done this she replied that as
a German she loved her fatherland. Not much credence was placed
in the woman's arguments and the man was freed inasmuch as he
had written the article before war had been declared against Ger-
many. In Vienna, the first days after the declaration of war, brutal
attacks were carried out by women on passersby who had the
misfortune to look like the citizens of enemy countries. Thus Chinese
were beaten because they resembled Japanese, Americans were mis-
taken for Englishmen, and Poles, who unfortunately looked like
Russians, were given pretty rough handling by these infuriated
women.

It is an idle question how the women got along in the masculine
pursuits which the hard necessity of war forced upon them against

34 THE SEXUAL HISTORY OF THE WORLD WAR

their will. The conditions under which they had to do this work that
was unfamiliar to them were definitely abnormal; and the worse
food conditions grew in the central European states, later in France
and even in the victorious nations, the more unjust is it to measure
their achievements by the gauge of normal, peaceful times. What-
ever our final opinion would be upon this subject, one thing is quite
certain— that the undernourished woman who had to work under
tbese abnormal conditions for any length of time sustained lasting
injuries to her health. Even today, more than a decade after the
outbreak of the war, the consequences of this exploitation of women
during the war can be observed in industrial workers, especially
the women and the younger generation. Very frequently women
substituted for their husbands in quite unwomanly pursuits. Whether
this contributed to raise the cultural level of women we will not
consider.

In France a member of the Chamber protested vigorously against
the purveying of military supplies by women of the half-world.
He reported that the French military officials had contracted a
whole series of agreements with women whose chief occupation
before the war had been to visit nocturnal quarters where they had
sought liaisons but who, since the outbreak of the war, had by
chance been transformed into purveyors of military supplies and
saw that the government did not lack for anything, from ammu-
nition to trains and condensed milk. A similar report was made in
Germany concerning the strumpets of Munich who for quite a
while engaged in nefarious business with food cards until the
police intervened. One remarkable consequence of the entrance of
women into economic life is the masculinization of the average
female type— a fact which has been demonstrated by Exner. This
is a fact of tremendous consequences for the history of morals. It
started during the war and in the few post-war years continued
energetically, commonly expressing itself in such matters as smok-
ing and drinking. Exner has pointed to the remarkable increase in
female criminality during and after the war. Murder, assault and
battery, burglary, mayhem, opposition to laws and criminal prac-
tices of all kinds have played a far greater role among women
during the bellum and post-bellum period than ever before. With
regard to theft the same is true. During the war women stole more
than men do in normal times. This alteration in female criminality
is highly important to the penologist; and it will also be interesting
for the psychologist to investigate whether, as woman was called

WAR WIVES AND IMMORALITY

to take the place of man in various social and economic pursuits,
she also approached his status in these anti-social acts.

The productive participation of women in industry and the eco-
nomic sphere in general was only one of the innumerable causes
which we must hold responsible for the general transformation in
female morality. A whole mass of other circumstances, mostly of an
economic nature, tended toward the same end. During the Franco-
German war (1870-1871) a favorable moral effect was expected
from the fashion of war marriages which had just become very
popular. Such serious savants as Dr. Burchard pointed with pleasure
to the fact that in these war marriages it was a general rule that
love had conquered reason and that, since these marriages had
been contracted not out of any prudential reasons, but sheerly
out of love, some very favorable biological consequences might be
anticipated. It is possible that such consequences might result if
the war is of short duration, but the actual facts as we follow them
give the lie to any such optimistic speculations. War marriages
were generally entered into without an iota of any responsibility.
In many cases the couple so married was only interested in legiti-
matizing a single bridal night before the departure of the man.
There was a complete lack of spiritual or moral community and, as
a result, a vast and terrifying number of divorces took place im-
mediately after the war. Thus in 1918 a single Berlin court issued
seven hundred divorces in four months. In London and Paris too
the war led to an unprecedented and incredible number of divorces
occasioned by the economic and sexual starvation induced by the
war as well as by the unreasoned and animal haste of the frivolous
war marriage.

Professor Otto Baumgarten has left us a very comprehensive
statement on the whole question. The early marriage of the young
warrior, which had originally been greeted as a very commendable
consequence of the war because it would lead back its generation
from the unculture of a sophisticated period to nature and nai'ete,
soon appeared as a cause of the dissolution of marriage. Without
any lengthy consideration of the obligations which grew out of the
act, without the possibility of rooting the marital relationship cer-
tainly and deeply in mutually proven faith, these mass war mar-
riages soon became the cause of a continually rising divorce rate.
There were so many lonesome instinctive human beings who, after
the first blaze of sexuality had been dissipated, had no interest in
each other. However, who was there to deny the pleasure of a

36 THE SEXUAL HISTORY OF THE WORLD WAR

moment to these men who were going to give their lives? In France,
instead of praising the moralizing and eugenic effect of war mar-
riages, they contended themselves with poking fun at the even
vaster number of rapid-fire marriages. Here it appeared that the
majority of couples who came to the authorities for these marriages
were such as had been living in free union before. At the outbreak
of the war, Blasco Ibanez reported that half of Pans ran to get
married. Thousands of couples beleaguered the municipal offices,
and all the men said the same: "We want to get married for
tomorrow I am going away." So without any documents and with-
out any other testimony than that of two neighbors, who had been
witnesses often for many years, of their free union and their marita
disturbances, the couple were legitimately married. At the order ot
the government, the magistrates' clerks received them in groups of
twenty and performed wholesale marriages. There were districts
in Paris where during the forenoon three hundred marriages would
be performed. Very frequently a little patrol of children would
run before these couples and look on the proceedings with great
amazement, shouting with glee that papa and mama had come to
get married. Frequently and in every country, these marriages
were entered into for the reason that the woman, as the wife ot a
soldier serving on the field of battle, was guaranteed certain eco-
nomic privileges. .

The infidelity of war wives constituted for years the mote in
the eye of moralists, but life contradicted all predictions and specu-
lations At the beginning of the war Germany heard enthusiastic
tirades concerning the moral earnestness of German women as
contrasted with the frivolity of their enemy sisters m France. The
question was there discussed whether women had sexual needs
comparable to those of men. Vorberg wrote that, during the war
German women, in their difficult and trying circumstances, had
other things in mind than to make themselves vessels^ of lust.
German women, he thought, had nothing in common with those
degenerate women who even in peace times pursue men.

Similarly it was Dr. Frankel's opinion that the cares and the
economic obligations of German women had grown so consider-
ably that there was very little time or desire, for that matter, left to
her to engage in amorous escapades. Moreover, there was very little
temptation at home, for vigorous men either were lacking, or so
sunk in terrifically important work that they were inaccessible;
finally it was his opinion that the chief difference between the

WAR WIVES AND IMMORALITY

sexes was that women had a much weaker libido, at least one-tenth
of them being frigid. For women, erotical desires can become
dormant during the illness of the husband, during widowhood,
during the long absence of a husband away at war, even when the
generative impulse was formerly normal. Of this Frankel was con-
vinced as a result of his conversations with sensible women. And as
to the virginal female, unless she has been awakened by false train-
ing, friends, pornographic reading or pathological temperament,
she does not know the libido or at any rate only very diffusely in
the subconscious, and has no nisus sexualis. A similar opinion was
entertained by a woman authority on the subject who asserted that
for a woman who was ethically on a high level the absence of her
husband would not easily lead to infidelity. Such a woman is also
seduceable but her senses only awake when the soul speaks too,
and a whole world separates her from a man who does not captivate
her whole interior life. That is why a woman can live for years and
even, if necessary, forever in celibacy.

Alas for these lofty opinions! We have but to read what was
written concerning the soldier's wife and her morality during the
war years. People, who as a result of myopic prejudices, were
unable to think through the moral consequences of the economic
transformation of the tremendously altered conditions of life, took
occasion to express their dismay at the moral decay. A very strong
specimen of such an expression is the following: In May, 1915, the
Mayor of Vorbach in Alsace-Lorraine issued a proclamation to the
effect that morals in that city had suffered a remarkable decline,
despite the great difficulties of the time, the poverty and the misery.
The most lamentable sign of the demoralization of a certain class
of women was that among them there were numerous frivolous
married women whose husbands were in the field of battle. These
dishonorable and shameless strumpets, who were undermining the
foundations of their whole family, aroused his ire particularly. He
asserted that all these malefactors were known to him and to his
police officials and that similar trespasses in the future would
occasion their arrest and branding. He expressed his great regret at
not being able to administer public floggings to these miserable
creatures.

In the Catholic magazine Monika (Number 24 for June 12,
191 5) there appeared a long article under the title of Bloody Tears
Should Be Shed for These which gives us a vivid picture of this
evil. The director of a certain movie house was compelled to ap-

3 8 THE SEXUAL HISTORY OF THE WORLD WAR

pear before his audience and to make the following remarks: "It
has been reported to me that outside of the theater a trooper is
now seeking admission in order to surprise his wife and her lover.
I am tremendously concerned to avoid every bit of scandal; hence
I beg those who are concerned by this to please leave by the little
door at the right in front of the theater. This must happen at once
for the infuriated husband trooper is already at the cashier's win-
dow buying his ticket." No sooner had these words been spoken
than there was a rush for the door and a milling crowd of twenty-
three couples disappeared in the semi-darkness and confusion.

It would be a fairly simple matter to fill many volumes with
similar anecdotes and stories of the infidelity of soldiers' wives in
Germany and Entente lands. We are only interested in the fact
that during the war there was no strengthening of civil sexual
morality but that, on the contrary, the opposite was true. A sum-
mary statement of this was given by Dr. Auer of the Superior
Court of Budapest who asserted that from old experience (de-
rived from peace times) it was possible to say that in those places
where garrisons were quartered, immorality and illegitimate births
increased, and indissolubly connected with these transgressions,
pandering and abortion. These correlations of soldiery and immor-
ality were, of course, maintained during the war in increased
measure because there were the added factors of the frequent
movement of great masses of men, the lack of any ordered family
life, the absence of the husband and the increased erotic desire.

This development came to expression everywhere towards the
end of the war in the increase of illegitimate births. Now this evil
had one favorable consequence for the history of morals— during
the war a good deal was done to diminish the difference between
children born in and out of wedlock. In accordance with a petition
of the Berlin Chapter of the League for the Defense of Mothers,
the Reichstag, on August 4, 1914, came to the conclusion that
federal war relief would be extended also to illegitimate children.
Here was one movement inaugurated during the war which con-
tinued after the war and dealt heavy blows against bourgeois
morality.

Professor Exner has made the following observations concerning
the increase of infidelity and of abortion during the war: One
infraction of morality of this period that had a far more destruc-
tive effect upon society than anyone, who knew only statistics and
no more, could surmise was marital infidelity. The Austrian sta-

WAR WIVES AND IMMORALITY

tistics were silent on this subject whereas in Germany figures
showed a considerable decrease in the punishing of marital infideli-
ties. This, however, proves nothing, for the absence of the husband
naturally had the consequence of making the discovery and prose-
cution of the trespass more difficult. Nothing alters the undenied
fact that marital infidelity increased to such a terrific extent that
Wulffen could speak of the triumphal march of infidelity. This will
not appear remarkable in view of the absence of the husbands and
the numerous temptations surrounding the women, among which
may be mentioned such items as night work in war industries, and
living together with war prisoners, etc. If it is impossible statistic-
ally to assert how many war marriages were rapidly dissolved
through infidelity, still the fearful frequency of divorces cast a
lurid light on the whole business. Thus in Vienna, divorces became
three times as numerous after the war as before.

The moral conditions of the time find a reflection also in an-
other set of facts which interest us here — the statistics of abortions
and murders of children. That both these crimes increased during
the war there can be no question. The Austrian statistics again are
silent on this subject but the German figures show a, definite in-
crease over the average of the pre-war period. A stronger proof for
the correctness of our assertion can be found in the growth of
abortion. In Germany the figures even show a decrease of con-
viction for this crime during the war but this favorable develop-
ment is only in appearance for, whereas in the year 19 17, there
were 17.6 per cent fewer convictions than in pre-war days, this
year also a shows a decrease of births of 52.5 per cent. In Berlin, of
one hundred women who in 19 16 visited a clinic because of incom-
plete and insufficient abortion, eighty-nine had used abortifacients.
Similar increases can be noticed in Mayence and Vienna; and we
must remember that during the war, draconian penalties were in-
flicted for this practice. Thus in June, 191 5, a seamstress of Berlin
who had been accused of violating Paragraph 218 was sentenced to
two years in the workhouse. The prosecuting attorney had moved
for just one year but the court doubled the penalty on the ground
that abortion, from the standpoint of the public welfare and health,
was an extremely dangerous practice.

A consequence of the war, much less lamentable than abortion
for the progressive student of population, is the dissemination
during the war years of preventive measures and hence of a fall in
population. Here again we are dealing with an important transfor-

4o THE SEXUAL HISTORY OF THE WORLD WAR

mation of sexual morality whose consequences will remain opera-
tive in post-war times. Dr. M. Vaerting has said that the war
contributed immeasurably to an employment of the technique of
preventive intercourse among both men and women. As a result of
the sudden and protracted separation of the sexes extra-marital
sexual relations assumed tremendous proportions. It can be assumed,
however, that all the men and women who engaged in such inter-
course were almost without exception acquainted with the use of
contraceptive measures. In addition the leaders of the military
forces added the weight of their authority to the learning and
teaching of the technique of preventive intercourse on a wholesale
scale so that the medical corps gave methodical instructions to the
soldiers on this matter calculated to help them escape venereal

infection. . .

Even more illuminating for the understanding of popular opinion
concerning the soldier's wife, the much maligned straw-widow, is
a very typical Hungarian ballad that arose in the Magyar land
during the year. These lines which show the extent of the infidelity
of soldiers' wives and its permeation through vast stretches of the
population are put into the mouth of a peasant woman whose
husband is on the battle front and who receives relief at home.
She expresses very definitely the opinion that she would rather not
have him come home because she is having such a good time and
has much more than she ever had before.

Many stories are extant concerning the fearful vengeance carried
out by the soldier who returns home suddenly, on leave or per-
manently, and finds his faithless wife perhaps in flagrante. The
almost sadistic joy in the discovery which frequently comes to
expression in these stories, the utter incapacity to sympathize with
these most unfortunate victims and to grant them their human
rights, is one of the foul attendant circumstances of war. Perhaps
we ought to give one example of an event of this sort.

One day a certain brave soldier, from whom no word had come
for a whole year, returned home from the front. It may have been
that his postal cards from the field of battle were miscarried or
perhaps he couldn't write and had been unable to send any other
messages. At any rate his wife sent both her children away to the
"country" and began to lead a right merry life with a recently
acquired lover. When the soldier came home and found his domi-
cile locked he visited the neighbors. From them he learned that
the children had been away from their mother for a long time and

WAR WIVES AND IMMORALITY

that the latter generally returned home very late. From all these
sources he was able to piece together the miserable story of his
wife's frivolity and heartlessness. The soldier pretended that he
didn't quite believe these shocking reports and waited for his wife
from two o'clock in the afternoon to nine in the evening. Finally
she arrived and expressed great delight at seeing her husband again
after the many months of absence. He showed pleasure at this
demonstration of affection, smiled graciously and kissed her ten-
derly as she fell upon his neck to the great astonishment of all the
neighbors who had naturally expected quite a different reaction on
her part. But for the moment she was, or pretended to be, the most
loving wife in the world. The couple entered their home and
everything was quiet. Towards midnight the neighbors were awak-
ened by the most horrible screams which issued from the house
of the soldier. They broke in the door and found the woman lying
on the floor groaning and moaning in agonies of pain and the
soldier getting ready to depart. What had happened? The deceived
husband had lectured his wife on the subject of her infidelity and
after a number of unsuccessful denials she confessed. Thereupon
the husband declared that he would not decide upon her punish-
ment until he had dined as he had been traveling for sixty hours.
The woman lit a fire in the stove and began to cook, the man
piling more coals into the stove until it was red hot. Then he tore
the clothes from his wife's body and, naked as she was, set her
upon the stove three times. She was brought to the hospital and
he was brought before the military court. The incident happened
at Altofen in July, 191 6. This it appears that the cruel realities of
life actually surpassed anything that was concocted by the imagina-
tion of the French novelist who wrote three volumes on the punish-
ments of unfaithful wives.

When one turns even cursorily the pages of the newspapers
during the period of the war, one can't help feeling that a method-
ical agitation was carried on to arouse in the soldiers the desire for
fierce revenge against their unfaithful wives; this is especially true
for the first two years of the war. We can only point in passing to
the horrible actions of those men left at home as unfit for service
and those jealous women rivals who wrote to the soldiers on the
battlefield the reports of the unfaithfulness of their brides or wives.

But the whole confounded hypocrisy of war morality which
poured its venom upon the unfaithful wives comes to light when
we consider how the husbands of these wives regarded marital

42 THE SEXUAL HISTORY OF THE WORLD WAR

fidelity when they were let loose in the trench brothel or the
cabaret behind the lines. Actually the double morality of the
bourgeois code of morals celebrated real orgies during the war. It
is time to demand justice for the wives of soldiers who so fre-
quently were denounced without any ground at all. During these
years they suffered incredibly both in body and in soul; in body
because, despite insufficient nourishment and compulsory conti-
nence, they had to perform tasks way beyond their capacities; and
in soul, because they had to stand by and watch the neglect and
undernourishment of their children and observe the multifarious
terrors of war aside from their worries about their breadgiver^ or
relative at the battle-front. A statistical explanation of this suffering
that the women had to undergo is to be found in the horrible
spread of psychic diseases among them.

Many students have discussed the question whether there are
actual war psychoses, that is to say, mental disturbances called
forth exclusively by the war, and a number of these scientists,
including Oppenheimer, Mayer, Wallenberg, Bonhoeffer, have denied
it. At the beginning of the war there was even a diminution of
the number of mental patients which was praised as a definite
sign of the nervous power of the population. However, it cannot
be denied that effectual psychology experiences have the tendency
to come to expression within an existing psychoses and to come
to the surface in the most varied symptoms and the most numerous
pathological forms. This is to say that the war complex will be-
come increasingly effective in the symptomatology of the war
psychoses and will give these mental disturbances a definite war-
coloring. Among soldiers this war-coloring comes to very clear
expression especially in perceptual illusions and maniacal ideas and
even in the whole content of consciousness. Of course this par-
ticular quality of the psychoses reflecting the military disturbance
of the time is much more easily seen in the man, especially in the
soldier, than in the woman who stays at home for she does not
come into direct contact with war and hears only indirectly from
those who have experienced it or in reading about its atrocities and
terrors.

But we are not concerned with investigating the exact nature of
war psychoses. Let us admit that war is merely the direct or precipi-
tated cause of the mental illness of these women which gives only a
special coloring to their diseases. Nevertheless, it by no means
follows that the war has not exercised a most decisive influence on

WAR WIVES AND IMMORALITY

psychic disturbances in women. The psychic effect of war upon
the women left at home is definitely one chapter in the history of
the sorrows induced by the war which can not be omitted in any
full and impartial analysis. We may remember the report of E.
Mayer concerning a whole family in which a mother and two
daughters became mentally sick under the influence of the war. A
very rich collection of case histories relative to the subject of war
psychoses is to be found in an essay of Stuckau.

The desire to escape the intense mental agonies caused by the
sufferings and deprivations of war, some of which have been so
vividly described in the essay of Stuckau just referred to, led to
wholesale suicides. Naturally enough, we do not have satisfactory
statistics on this subject for the very obvious reason that every
land had a great interest in concealing such happenings; for it
would not do to have the enthusiasm for war diminished as a result
of publicly printing such events. We shall mention but one example
of this governmental policy which will also serve as testimony of
the spiritual degradation of man during the war. At the end of
May, 19 1 5, the German censor sent the following report to all
German newspapers: "It is undesirable to print reports concerning
the suicides of young girls as a result of the death of their be-
trothed. The publication of such senseless actions is to be pro-
hibited because of its effect on the morale of the land and secondly
because of the possible contagion and spread of these suicides."
However, such ostrich policies were of very little avail. In every
one of the war countries there was a veritable epidemic of suicides.
The most that could be done was to avoid printing the motive of
the acts, but the public could very well read it between the lines.
Thus the Vienna Arbeiter Zeitung of May 20, 1917, contained the
following report: "Seeks Death Because Husband Dies. A twenty-
five-year-old working woman, Aloisia K. yesterday threw herself
out of a window on the third story of a house in Reinprechtsdorf-
erstrasse and sustained a concussion of the brain, fractured skull,
fractured thigh and other injuries. She was brought to the Franz
Josef Hospital. Although Mrs. K. is the mother of three children
she committed the act because of grief at the death of her husband.
The police correspendent is silent on the cause of her husband's
death but it is well known none the less."

Two cases of suicide may be quoted from the book of Stuckau:
"Since mobilization the husband of P. is in the battlefield. Ever
since that time she is very downcast, cries a lot, hardly cooks at

44 THE SEXUAL HISTORY OF THE WORLD WAR

The Popular Parisian Conception of the Immoralitt of War Wives

all, says that she would gladly die of hunger together with her
children, wants to run away continually, and especially towards
evening becomes very listless. Eight days ago her husband came
home on a three-day furlough. When he left she became terribly
excited, declared that she couldn't live any longer and subse-
quently had dreadful headaches. Thereupon she was committed to
an insane asylum. She was asked, 'Why are you here?' To this she
answered, T have cried so much now I want to go back to my chil-
dren and shan't cry any more. Please do me a favor and let me go.
You see I must work. I only cried because my husband went away
to the war. He came home on a visit and now has gone again. When
he left I said a word which didn't mean what my sister-in-law
thought it meant. One does talk much sometimes. I only said, "I
have to die. I want to die if my husband should not come home
again." I couldn't cook anything. When my husband was away I
cried continually but now I shan't do it any longer for I made a
new resolution yesterday. In the evening when I said my prayers
I cried a great deal. This has been going on ever since the war

WAR WIVES AND IMMORALITY

began and after my crying spells I couldn't sleep. My husband and
I love each other very much and that is why I took it to heart so
when he was gone.' "

The other case is that of Mrs. A. S., twenty-three years old, mar-
ried a year and a quarter. "When her husband left to serve in the
infantry she was gravid. Ever since his departure she is in a de-
pressed and sorrowful mood, just sits still, cries a lot and stares at
the floor. She was very poorly nourished, did very little for the
household and never went out at all. Two months ago she attempted
suicide and still has a red mark on her neck but it isn't known
exactly what method of terminating her life she attempted to use.
Recently she has again expressed her desire to take her life. Before
her husband left her, however, she was always healthy and had
never been in such a depressed condition."

A whole series of suicides (and of course the spiritual disturb-
ances which had preceded them) occurred as a result of artificially
implanted regrets. Now of these cases it can certainly be said that
the number would have been considerably reduced had these
unfortunate women, suffering from sex hunger, poverty and lone-
someness, found more sympathy and understanding. Innumerable
are the consequences of the continence which bourgeois society
sought to impose upon soldiers' wives without exception. Women
who obeyed these commandments very often paid for their obedi-
ence in grave bodily disturbances. Almost the same sequelae of
abstinence manifested themselves among women as among men
serving on the field of battle. In both cases abstinence resulted in
two things: first in a serious impairment of health, and secondly in
a subsequent orgy of sex indulgence. As far as the first consequence
is concerned, Dr. Burchard has already established the fact that
there was a definite increase in the dysthymic conditions which
appear among women as a result of menstruation or climacteric
pregnancy, parturition and lactation.

Moreover the famous Berlin gynecologist, Hirsch, has confirmed
the report that war constituted a trauma of extraordinary force for
the female psyche and that the psychological reaction varied with
the resistance of the individual and his contribution to the sacrifices
of war. No attentive observer could fail to note the almost patho-
logical alteration of the female psyche under the hammer blows of
war or the harmfulness to the whole nervous system, and the com-
plete transformation which the war called for in the domain of sex.
The sexual continence, suddenly made compulsory, drove many,

46 THE SEXUAL HISTORY OF THE WORLD WAR

whose sexual impulse had recevied normal satisfaction in marriage,
to self-satisfaction with all the nervous consequences that the auto-
erotic aberration always entails; and occasionally also to perver-
sions, chiefly lesbianism. Many cases of marital infidelity, many a
case of crime due to passion, many a drama of love should, from
this point of view, deserve a milder judgment.

At this point we should mention another fact connected with this
general theme of disturbances in the female induced by the war —
the surprisingly common absence of the period. Whereas, as we
have seen, all sorts of obstinate efforts were made to deny that the
war psychoses constituted a specific disturbance, in the case of the
disturbed or absent menses it was found absolutely necessary to use
the expression coined by Dietrich, war-amenorrhcea. This disturb-
ance was found in women who lived in the city as well as in the
country and especially among those whose husbands or lovers were
on the battlefield and who had to perform difficult bodily or mental
work. This war-amenorrhcea came to expression in Germany as
well as in other lands shortly after the outbreak of the war. How-
ever, in the middle of 19 15 this condition became much more
frequent and in the ensuing years was constantly on the increase.
Professor Muller attributed this disturbance of the female periodi-
cal function to three factors, so-called etiological moments. These
were malnutrition, the change in the mode of life brought about by
the war, and, finally, the influence of the war upon the psyche.
Professor Muller emphasized the fact that the psychological atmos-
phere played a not inconsiderable role in the war. As the war
dragged on and reports trickled in from the battlefield about the
death or grave injury sustained by loved ones, or perhaps by the
capture of the loved one and interment in some enemy camp, and
when these reports were repeated, the wives and mothers, sisters
and brides affected naturally fell prey to deep depressive disturb-
ances; and it is well known that even in peace times the latter
conditions can induce cessatio mensum. We need not even assume
as a supplementary factor the yearning for love so emphasized by
Eckstein which of course is to be found in many cases and can
undoubtedly be a co-factor in producing the disturbance in ques-
tion. However, it must be asserted again that this compulsory
sexual abstinence was certainly a contributing cause of the war-
amenorrhoea ws have been speaking about.

The reverse side of this abstinence is the fact so frequently found
during the war, namely, the almost pathologically increased love

WAR WIVES AND IMMORALITY

needs of the soldier's wife. That this erotic need was damned up
by patriotic and national limits will certainly not appear strange
to us, but during the war it was ferociously and insistently con-
demned. Today nothing seems to us more natural than that the
woman suffering from sexual hunger should, if she is unwilling to
forego normal sex life, find a partner wherever one is to be found.
Since their own husbands were away the very numerous prisoners-
of-war at hand were available as substitutes. This was especially
true in the central states and in Russia after the revolution where
the prisoners-of-war enjoyed a comparative degree of freedom, and,
especially in the country, worked in the field side by side with
women. In this way, love for prisoners-of-war became a typical
phenomena of the war and one that could not be eradicated by any
fervent patriotic phrases. Dr. Wilhelm Stekel has written a very
readable article on this subject from which it appears that, even at
the beginning of the war, in Germany all the newspapers com-
plained about the obvious and even exaggerated kindness and gen-
tleness with which the German women treated the prisoners-of-
war. As an instance of this, Stekel cites the following news item
from the Frankfurter Zeitung. It appeared that two trains pulled
into the Frankfurt station at the same time — one carrying German
soldiers to the front, the other bringing French prisoners-of-war
from the front. The German soldiers sang at the station as every-
where else and without any particular purpose the Wacht am Rhein.
Whereupon a blonde woman, the wife of a pastor, called out from
her little house that they ought to desist from singing their patriotic
anthem out of consideration for the prisoners-of-war.

Stekel goes on to say that this love for prisoners must have some
connection with the psychological constitution of women. It is
silly to speak of the psychic inferiority of women in this connec-
tion, but women are above all children, and stand much closer
to childish feelings than male adults. They are always attracted by
the novel, and Stekel adduces as an example of this constant lure
of the new and strange for women the queer predilection for
Ashantis that for a while raged in Vienna. It appeared that in the
Vienna Prater there was for some time a group of Ashanti negroes
on exhibition. Soon it became known that many Viennese women
would approach these negroes under different pretexts. We know
the same is true of many American women who have striking
inclinations for Chinese and negroes which they hide from the
external world. Stekel, however, thought that a consideration of

48 THE SEXUAL HISTORY OF THE WORLD WAR

this problem would lead much deeper and ultimately come to the
influence of that remarkable phenomena which he called the war
of the sexes. Between men and women there rages an eternal war
in which there is only an armistice but no lasting peace. This war
of the sexes abated during the World War apparently only because
a common foe forced both sexes to combine against him. In reality
women used the war to acquire the positions of men, some of them
perhaps forever. Numerous women worked at the production of
munitions and other vocations which had hitherto been closed to
them After the war they vociferously continued to demand the
rights due to them and in England even during the war they rose
up because they could point to their indispensability. This war of
the sexes makes of man the natural enemy of woman. The enemy
of the man therefore becomes in this roundabout way the ally of
the woman. Stekel thinks that the love for prisoners is attributable
to this feeling. Women love the enemy because (not despite the
fact that) they hated the men. They were obeying some dark im-
pulse to avenge themselves upon their husbands and to inflict upon
them a peculiar painful punishment. The men of their own nation
were by their infidelity dishonored, and the men of the foreign
country were only used as a means for expressing their depreciation
of the man who was close to them. The formula of the reaction
might be "I love you because our men hate you."

In this way Stekel makes responsible for the widespread phe-
nomena of love for enemy prisoners the so-called hatred of the
sexes which has been propounded by a number of students. Others,
however have emphasized more the other element mentioned by
Stekel namely, the charm of novelty which a great number of
women cannot resist. Vorberg inclined to this explanation. He has
pointed out that just as in peace time the fair sex had manifested an
inclination for Senegalese, Bedouins and other colonials, so it can-
not be accounted as remarkable that they were now attracted by
foreign soldiers. There are certain women who would always be
attracted to men of strange appearance and alien odor. For such
women most of whom lack some serious activity to fill their life,
the foreigner would be a long desired change in the uniform
monotony of their everyday existence. A foreigner is the great
unknown who gives the woman ground to hope for something
extraordinary, exciting, electrifying. .

It cannot be doubted that such, and similar tendencies of women
were concerned in the numerous infidelities with prisoners-of-war,

WAR WIVES AND IMMORALITY

yet we believe that in the majority of cases there is a simpler
explanation which is quite satisfactory— namely, the absence of
men and the consequent sexual hunger of the women. Naturally
this explanation, simple as it is, would not find ready hearing during
the war because of the needs of propaganda. The love affairs with
prisoners were, and remained, an almost insoluble problem for the
authorities who were entrusted with its solution. In France and
England proximity to prisoners-of-war was almost impossible and
yet even here the relationships between women and prisoners ex-
isted. Indeed in France women were sentenced to death because
they had aided their beloved prisoners to escape. But it is in Ger-
many, Austria and Russia where these phenomena can be regarded
as typical. Especially in Germany such cases were a steady item on
the court dockets. Society and the authorities worked hand in hand
to combat this undesirable love for prisoners-of-war but all the
patriotic enthusiasm notwithstanding their efforts remained un-
availing— a circumstance which can serve as proof that we are
dealing here not with a pathological excitation but with a general
symptom of war. Perhaps a few examples would be helpful:

The general staff at Leipzig reported that in the first quarter of
19 1 7 no less than twenty-five girls and women were punished for
having relations with the prisoners-of-war. Most of these women
were imprisoned. At Innesbruck during the last period of the war
there was active a certain society called The Cowards' League
whose object it was to publicly beat such dishonorable girls and
women who had entered into relations with prisoners-of-war.
Grabinski has made a very interesting collection of numerous cases
of this sort that took place in the year 1916 and the reader is
referred to that source for further information. In 1918, when the
question of amnesty for soldiers' wives was discussed in Germany,
certain groups were of the opinion that this amnesty should not be
extended to those women who had been imprisoned because of
prohibited intercourse with prisoners-of-war.

The social side of this painful problem deserves cursory notice
at least. Almost always in these convictions which we have been
speaking of, the accused were members of the urban or rural pro-
letariat. It was nearly always peasant and working women who
were indicted for the prohibited relationship. Women of the higher
classes of society could satisfy their sex hunger in less dangerous
ways. The accusation is not unjustified that the patriotic prohibition
of love stopped at the threshold of the good bourgeois houses.

5o THE SEXUAL HISTORY OF THE WORLD WAR

When during the war the Hungarian dramatist, Desider Szomory,
presented upon the stage a love affair between a Hungarian noble-
woman and a Russian prisoner-of-war working upon her estate, no
one, as far as we know, had any objection to this. In addition to
love for prisoners, the woman suffering from sex hunger had numer-
ous other ways for satisfying her desire. In his famous novel of the
war, The Class of 1902, Glaser had recorded a number of actual
incidents where young men were seduced by soldiers' wives. Such
seductions not infrequently came before the courts. Let us relate
briefly a case of this sort which Dr. Hans Menzel has written under
the title, The Rape of Men by Women.

It appears likely that as a result of the lack of men during the
war, which condition may be expected to continue for a number
of years after the armistice, the rape of men was not an infrequent
occurrence and indeed may be expected to recur in the future ever
so often. At any rate there are extant a number of cases of rape
perpetrated by women against men. Recently a woman came to one
of the Breslau municipal information bureaus to inquire whether
she was justified in recalling at once her sixteen-year-old son who
was in service at a large estate in Silesia. The youth was un-
willing to serve there any longer because he was continually being
annoyed by two girls. The youth who was physically and psy-
chologically normal reported that in addition to him there were
three other servants on the estate— a man of about thirty, tem-
porarily released from war, and two girls twenty and twenty-five
years old respectively. The older servant girl had a relationship
with the older servant and the younger one was pursuing him. As
he was offering strong resistance to her maneuvers the other ser-
vants at first insulted and mocked him in the most indecent way.
Finally they seized him one day, and while the others held him, the
sex-hungry servant who had been pursuing him pulled off his
trousers and grasped his organ. She then went through many vig-
orous gyrations until she was appeased by the terrified youth.

We may assume that the sexual hunger of soldiers' wives very
frequently led to pseudo-homosexual actions. By this term we desire
to designate (following Iwan Bloch and Magnus Hirschfeld) the
assumption of homosexuality without the congenital psychic dis-
position for it. Considering the constitutional character of homo-
sexuality, there is no doubt that true homosexuality will not arise as
a result of abstinence. While we can by no means agree to the false
assumption that there is danger of a change in the sexual drive as a

WAR WIVES AND IMMORALITY

result of abstinence, nevertheless, it is true that homosexual prac-
tices constitute yet another proof of the devastating effect of
abstinence, for here is a case where human beings were driven to
actions which are really unnatural, not at all in the nature of those
who do them. (Here and there, to be sure, some of these women
may have been constitutional homosexuals who had merely been
doing violence to their natures in marriage.)

Inasmuch as there are very few cases reported in literature we
shall content ourselves with relating a correspondence that has come
to us from a village in Holstein:

Shortly before the war a neighbor got a new servant girl to
whom men were utterly repugnant but who very frequently, even
in the presence of the master of the household and myself, would
sit upon the lap of her mistress and kiss her, which would appar-
ently please the mistress a great deal. On the third day of the
mobilization the husband was recruited and it appeared to me as
though the woman was extremely happy over the fact that she was
getting rid of her husband. In the meantime there was all manner
of talk in the village concerning these two. Once I myself was an
eye-witness to a very telling scene. Both women were seated out-
doors in the garden and taking their pleasure undisturbed while I
stood nearby. Once when her husband came home for a few weeks
on furlough, the woman would have nothing to do with him. She
refused to let him touch her on the ground that he had lice, and he
had to sleep in a separate chamber while she and the girl slept
together. When the war was over the woman rapidly put an end
to the marriage by telling her husband very unequivocally that she
no longer needed a man, that she could do without him and that he
could go whence he had come. (The writer of the letter, a country
gentleman of Holstein, went on to explain that the divorce suit of
this couple lasted thirty months because the ground for divorce
originally adduced, namely, the homosexuality of the woman was
unrecognized as such but was finally granted on the ground of the
denial by the wife of the marital privilege.)

An Englishman who participated in the war has submitted to us
a lengthy description of the homosexuality of English women dur-
ing the war— a fact which has remained fairly unknown and of
course inaccessible to statistical measurement and manipulation. If
we are to believe the writer, auto-erotic intercourse as substitute
satisfaction became exceedingly popular among the women of Albion
who are so frequently regarded as unfeeling and cold.

52 THE SEXUAL HISTORY OF THE WORLD WAR

Consideration of space prevents us from expiating on various
other consequences of the sexual hunger of women. Thus in one
case known to me a woman asked her husband, who was on the
field of battle, to send her his shirts and when they came she would
inhale their odor ecstatically and thus excite herself to the point
of orgasm. The incredible spread of prostitution, especially in the
larger cities, which we shall consider very shortly, is to an appre-
ciable extent also attributed to this sexual hunger even if it must
be admitted that here as everywhere the economic factor is para-
mount It is certainly true that at least a large percentage of female
derelictions during the war, especially in the central European
states, were due entirely to economic distress. In this connection
too the fateful effect of the war cannot be glazed over for the
economic misery was in turn a natural consequence of the war with
its hunger blockade and its fantastically multiplied production of
war materials. But perhaps the most devastating fact in all this
array of pitiful circumstances is the complete lack of understand-
ing with which the war mentality regarded this dereliction of the
soldier's woman— the real martyr of the war of men. (Perhaps
France was to some degree an exception in this regard.) Instead of
regarding it as a natural consequence of war and pardoning it,
society continued to measure women by the gauge of a straight-
laced morality applicable to normal times. Only very few people
could achieve that minimum of understanding which was expressed
in the resume concerning the soldier's woman by the staff -physician,
Frankel already mentioned above. It was his opinion that the
women of the war period suffered severely and underwent severe
struggles within themselves. When they slipped, their mis-step was
fraught with very serious consequences for themselves, their mar-
riage morality, truth and eventually for life and health. If they
controlled themselves, then their usefulness, their calm and finally
their health was severely disturbed during their period of strain.
As we have accompanied the woman in her protracted journey
through the sorrows of war and seen all the ills that she was heir to,
we can well understand why it was that at the end of the war, the
serious anti-war propaganda was always directed to the woman,
aiming to win new power and effectiveness out of her sufferings
and to establish a strong and continuous organization to make im-
possible the repetition of such suffering. That every woman and
especially every proletarian woman who went through the war
necessarily became an adherent of pacifism and that the latter

WAR WIVES AND IMMORALITY

movement merged indissolubly with the women's movement is per-
haps the strongest hope for the future. We will close this chapter
concerning the sufferings of women during the war with a mention
of the poetic vision by Erich Kastner called Fantasy for the Day
after Tomorrow in which the poet envisons an uprising of all women
in the event of another war. The women of every single land rebel
and march upon the homes of the chiefs of the army, of the banks,
of the industries, of the government and haul out the bigwigs, who
manipulate wars for their profit, and taking them over their knee
administer a severe drubbing to the latter which effectively silences
their call to arms; thus the war does not materialize and it ends
almost immediately after it has begun.

Chapter 3

EROTICISM OF NURSES

Sexual Curiositv of Nurses— Nursing as Sex Outlet— Erotic Nature of
Occupation— Coprolagnic Pleasures— Their Demoralizing Influence—
Chronique Scandaleuse of Amatory Relations— Parisian Prostitutes Dis-
guised as Nurses— Nurses' Garb Used in Shady Dealings— Erotic Deter-
minants of Nursing— Curious Pathologic Cases— The "Love Expender —
The Evil Reputation of Nurses— Strange Visits of Women to the Trenches
—Nurses in Khaki— Sadistic Aspects of War Nursing— Erotic Stimulation
of Bloody Deeds— Abuse of Enemy by Women— Reaction of Soldiers to
Lusts of Nurses

IN two ways did woman come into direct contact with the actual
conduct of war: first as nurse, and, secondly and less commonly,
as active warrior. In this chapter we wish to consider the erotic
motives which play a greater or less role in nursing.

That the care of the sick is an essentially female occupation
which is based on the natural characteristics and disposition of
woman has long been known, nor was the knowledge of this fact
impaired during the war. First, because all the unfavorable experi-
ences of the war in this respect to the contrary notwithstanding,
the old point of view was retained anyhow; and secondly, because
the warring states were too busy replacing male workers by females
in order to release as much human material as possible for direct
participation in the waging of war.

In regard to our first point, the question of the natural disposition
of women for the care of the sick, the connections with sexuality
had long been apparent. Nevertheless in this respect too the war
purveyed valuable contributions for the deeper understanding of
the female psyche. In all too many cases one was compelled by the
experiences of the war to drop the assumption of a casual relation-
ship between female pity and an internal inclination to the care of
the sick. On purely speculative grounds Weininger had come to
this conclusion long before the war even though he still maintained
a belief in the natural capacity of women for the care of the sick:
"It is especially the generosity of the woman and her pity which
has given rise to the pretty legend of the psyche of woman and the
decisive argument of all belief in the higher ethical status of woman
—as nurse, as merciful sister. ... It is short-sighted to hold
woman's nursing of the sick as a proof of her pity, for the opposite
conclusion seems rather to follow from the fact. Man is so consti-
tuted that he could never be an onlooker of the pains of the sick; he

EROTICISM OF NURSES

would always suffer so much under these conditions that he would
be completely undone. For that reason the care of the sick would
be impossible for him. Anyone who has observed nurses closely
has noted with astonishment that they remain unmoved and tender
even under the most frightful agonies of a dying man and so it is
obvious that a man who would be unable to go through such a
spectacle would be a bad nurse. A man would wish to alleviate the
pain, to stay death, in a word, to help; where he would be unable
to help there would be no place for him. Then the female nurse
would have to come in to do her share. However, it would be
quite unjust to regard their value from any but a utilitarian stand-
point."

It must be admitted that Weininger was right even in his last
sentence. During the war the utilitarian standpoint was so dominant
that all others receded before it. The female nurse was employed
and the abuses which inevitably followed on the widespread usage
of this institution were permitted to go unobserved. And it was
quite clear that a considerable portion of the female nurses were
impelled to nursing by quite other than patriotic and humanitarian
motives.

It is a known fact that it was always women of the higher ranks
who, especially in the first months of the war, crowded the steps
of the train depots where the transports bearing wounded soldiers
stopped, and called into being a cult of the wounded whose erotic
background did not remain concealed, even to the public opinion
that at the beginning was so enthused about the war and so inclined
to overvalue all patriotic services. Whether the erotic or the play
motif predominated in this depended on the situation in question.
It must not be supposed, incidentally, that the play motif was a rare
thing. In a brochure on the role of woman during the war which
the French academician, Frederick Masson, issued in 191 5, we find
the statement that "certaines femmes seraient disposes a faire joujou
avec les blesses." And the same author in speaking of the abundant
proofs for the striking similarity of conditions in all rhe warring
states speaks of the cult of the wounded among the French women
as a temporary and effective substitute for the five o'clock tea and
the most titillating sort of flirtation.

In other cases the care of the sick exercised by these well-situated
dilettantes consisted of the most oppressive annoyances — concern-
ing which many tales were current during the war. One of the many
popular anecdotes which we now quote is characteristic of the

56 THE SEXUAL HISTORY OF THE WORLD WAR

opinion of soldiers about the cult of the wounded exercised and
developed at their expense:

A wounded soldier lay still and stark in a hall in which the pro-
fessional forces of the Red Cross were exercising their difficult
duties quietly and satisfactorily. But apart from these professional
forces a number of women came into the ward during the day-
women of the highest rank, women who were ignorant of these
methods, but women who possessed an unconquerable impulse to
show their good will. They had done one little thing or another
and so it had been difficult to prohibit them from entering the
ward and trying to make themselves useful. One such lady came
over to the wounded soldier who had to lie still.

"Can I do something for you perhaps?"

"No. I thank you."

"But perhaps I ought to wash your face a bit with vinegar

water." ...

The answer was "Hm." The lady took the little sponge which
was at hand, dipped it into the water which was prepared and then
drew it over the face of the wounded man— a procedure which
had been shown her.

"Do you perhaps want something else?"

But now the simple Bavarian could no longer contain himself.
"Do you know, I did not want to disturb your pleasure, but you
are without exaggeration the sixteenth one that has washed my

face today." u

In another connection we have already referred to the fact that
serious scientists have regarded the nursing activities of the women
as being one way of sublimating the libido and achieving sexual
pleasure. This was especially the case among the volunteer nurses
who were recruited from the best circles. At least a considerable
proportion of these women had from the start no trace of any
ethical motive; and the incapacity of the women recruited from
the upper class to carry out the very heavy and unpleasant task of
caring for the sick was there even when her activity was not
merely a social sport with greater or less erotic coloration. For the
patient always had the feeling of insulting the high-born condition
of his nurse by requesting the lowly and rather nasty things that
he needed The Hungarian soldier who tortured himself for a half-
day because he did not have the courage to demand of his fine and
distinguished volunteer nurse the requisite vessel is one case among
thousands This reticence was also observed in the relations with

EROTICISM OF NURSES

the professional nurses but of course to a much lesser degree since,
for the latter, it was a question of elementary professional duties.

Remarque has left us a contribution to this question. His hero
and a comrade are riding homeward in the wounded car. During
the night the hero wakes and turns to his comrade:

"Do you know where the latrine is?"

"I believe that to the right you have the door."

"I'll see." It is dark. I feel for the edge of the bed and want to
slip off carefully but my foot finds no support. I begin to slip. My
plaster cast leg is no help and with a crash I am lying on the floor.
"Damn!" say I.

"Have you bumped up against something?" asks Kopp.

"You could jolly well have heard the noise," I growl back. The
door opens behind us in the car, the sister comes in with a light
and sees me. "He has fallen out of his bed."

She feels my pulse and my forehead. "You have no fever."

"No," I agree.

"Were you dreaming then?" she asks.
"I suppose."

And so I again avoid asking my question. She looks at me with
her blue eyes. She is so clean and lovely that it is impossible for me
to tell her what I want. I am again lifted up and when she goes out
I try once more to slip off the bed. If she were an old woman it
would be easy for me to tell her but she is very young — twenty-
five at the most and I just can't bring myself to tell her what I
want.

Now Albert comes to my help and he isn't quite so hesitant
about the matter because, after all, it doesn't concern him. He calls
the sister and she turns around.

"Sister," he says, "he wants ." But Albert also is ignorant of

the term to use, a term that will be decent and inoffensive. We have
one word for it when we talk among ourselves but not here before
such a lady. However, just then he remembers something from his
school days and he finishes the sentence with "He would like to
leave the room, sister."

"Oh well," answers the sister. "Certainly he needn't have clam-
bered out of bed with his plaster cast for that."

"What will you have then?" she inquires of me.

I am frightfully scared of the turn the conversation has taken and
I have no notion at all how the things are termed professionally.
The sister comes to my help by asking, "Small or large?"

58 THE SEXUAL HISTORY OF THE WORLD WAR

I sweat like an ape and mumble in my confusion, "Oh well, a
small one."

Well even this was somewhat lucky. I receive the bottle. After
a few hours I was no longer the only one and by morning we had
all become accustomed to require without any shame that which
we needed.

Now it must be made clear that this modesty of the man rested
on a false presupposition for the distinguished and high-born nurses
as well as the professionals who in no way shared these feelings.
On the contrary, they were frequently led into the hospital by
desires which had a very definite libidinous coloring— to observe
closely the intimate details of the male organism. An Austrian
soldier has made the following note in his war diary:

"It is quite undescribable how the ladies who receive the
wounded at the station in G— acted toward us. For the most part
we were in a horrible condition, shot up and just worn out com-
pletely by the journey and among us there was one comrade who
had to have a leg amputated at once. Very frequently these women
would insist that we undress although it wasn't necessary. Every
two minutes we were asked whether we didn't have to satisfy any
needs. Of course we had our own opinion on that subject but we
were too tired to complain or to contradict."

In the most splendid of all war books Karl Kraus has one of the
regimental physicians of the Austrian army and his colleague have
the following conversation which is relevant to our theme:

The regimental physician: "Yesterday we had an awful day at
the hospital. The nurse Adele has an enormous fear of me and she
dropped the bed-pan of a Bosnian soldier. You should have seen the
great merriment the others derived from this until I came by. Of
course the women must be impressed. But yesterday at all events
we had a great day."

The colleague: "The same conditions obtain among us. The greed
of these aristocratic women is quite incomprehensible to me. The
others serve in the linen rooms, pantries and so forth, but the
aristocrats desire nothing more or less than service with the bed-
pans." ....

The regimental physician: "I must confess that at the beginning
I was intrigued to see such fine girls doing such work. But one
becomes dulled to such matters. I wondered to myself, 'Why do
they do it?' For patriotism and so forth. But where have I read that
we, the physicians, should be against it because the shock which the

EROTICISM OF NURSES

female nervous system derives eventually makes nurses entirely
unfit for marriage. It is a problem, but one would be insane to
worry about problems during the war."

Again we have the report of Lieutenant Federl who was cap-
tured by the French. He asserted that when at a certain station he
desired to visit the privy, the ladies of the Red Cross who were
accompanying the soldiers demanded that the door remain open
and all these women observed him as he performed these natural
functions.

Numerous similar stories are told concerning French ladies of
the best social circles which may be accounted for partially by the
unconcern of the French in these matters. One need think only of
the public privies in the Parisian streets in which the man can
quietly perform his functions while the upper portion of his body
can stick out from a narrow aperture and continue undisturbed his
conversation with the woman standing nearby. Masson, in the book
already mentioned, has established this coprolagnic pleasure in
French women during the war.

Not only is it certain that the motives which drew many women,
especially of the better classes, to nursing are difficult to explain
without the point of view of the psychopathia sexualis but con-
versely that the moralizing influence, which this altruistic profes-
sion was expected to exert upon the men were for the most part
quite unrealized during the World War. In his frequently quoted
book Eberhard has cited the following statement of the superin-
tendent of nurses in a hospital which had originally appeared in
the Deutscher Evangelische Frauenzeitung:

"No one who has not been a nurse knows to how many moral
dangers she is exposed. Nursing as such does not entail or exercise
any exalting influence just because certain pious and noble women
have manifested devotion and love to their neighbors. It has been
assumed fallaciously that it was such service which made these
women noble but this is not the case; the reverse is rather true.
For example, the danger of a nurse becoming hard and dull is very
large and real; unfortunately in all organizations there are nurses
who have become hard and callous. And nobody has a finer appre-
ciation of this condition of the nurse than the patient himself who,
as a result of his physical pains and weaknesses, has become a more
sensitive person than the healthy man. Furthermore, in the mental
and physical defenselessness of the patient there is the temptation
that the nurse will involuntarily seek to abuse her unconditional

6o THE SEXUAL HISTORY OF THE WORLD WAR

power and exercise an intolerable tyranny over the sick But of
course the greatest danger of all lies in the care of men and in the
continuous intercourse with the young physicians. All these dan-
gers increased enormously during the war. There are extant numer-
ous proofs of the misuse of the nurse's authority. In the anony-
mous Germans novel of the war called Hagen Im Weltkrteg there is
an interesting conversation between two soldiers at the front who
have very depressing things to relate concerning this particular
matter. Thus one relates the following: _
" 'I am talking against the whole system to which the soldier is
exposed, the soldier whose highest duty and honor lies in his
obedience. Now, take or example, the examinations, in the examin-
ing room of the Red Cross nurses. I think that it is a real shame. 1
myself have been in the psychopathic department of a garrison hos-
pital where the soldiers had to stand in line naked and wait for the
physician, while three young geese in nurses' clothing continually
went to and fro bearing a certain very significant smile on their
impudent little faces. It is an unheard of thing that immature
girls ministers' daughters and that sort of people, who at home and
school were taught that nakedness is a sin, should be asking the
soldiers whether they have a venereal disease and if so where they
got it and in certain cases even actually taking a specimen. This is
especially strange considering the fact that our culture is so very
prudish and that our ministers, for example, go into such a nufl
whenever they see statues of naked people. Or take, for example,
another experience that I had where a certain lady had a job as a
secretary to a physician. Among her duties she had to prepare the
patients (psychopaths) for examination and even to assist in the
actual examination in which the psychotics had to pull up their
shirts and expose their private parts. One can understand how her
chaste sensibilities were prostituted and grossly abused in this
procedure If conditions were reversed then every paper would be
full of outcries against the immorality. Finally, I might say, that
I was present when nurses made their rounds with the visiting
physicians in the venereal ward and did things which the mass of
orderlies standing around could just as well have done ' "

The superintendent, Margot von Bonin, whom Eberhard has
quoted did not mention certain other dangers which the female
nursing corps was exposed to and which, from the standpoint of
bourgeois morality, must appear very considerable indeed. Insofar
as these hazards issued in a greater erotic freedom for the nurses,

EROTICISM OF NURSES

we believe that we can attribute that freedom to the material inde-
pendence which these women derived from their profession. We
omit at this point any consideration of the escapades between nurses
and soldiers — a matter with which the chronique scandaleuse of the
war years was filled to overflowing. They are scarcely to be con-
sidered as anything other than a natural consequence of woman's
active participation in a profession — a phenomenon which finds its
parallel in the life of women active in other vocations. Everywhere
material independence goes hand in hand with a freer conception
of sexual morality so that we can not believe that the nurse's way
of life has anything particularly symptomatic about it. The most
that we can say is that the great pleasure which accompanied the
composition and narration of these scandalous stories during the
war was rather symptomatic of the pathologically increased erotic
interest of the time.

During the war there was a popular song current in Hungary
concerning the more than doubtful reputation of the nurses. Ob-
jectively it can be said that this bad reputation was shared by all
categories of nurses from the kitchen personnel to the Red Cross
nurses, deaconesses and even Catholic sisters. Of course there are
no statistics by the aid of which we can control these assertions.
One fact must not be overlooked in this connection — that among
the nurses there were a not inconsiderable portion of erstwhile
prostitutes. Thus in the cities of the north of France, especially in
Calais, formal raids had to be carried out among the thousands of
Belgian women who streamed across the French border after the
capture of Antwerp by the Germans. These raids were not so
much concerned with the finding of women spies as with the elimi-
nation of certain girls who had been street- walkers in Brussels and
Antwerp and were now continuing their maneuvers in the popu-
lous little cities of northern France; only now they wore the simple
black and white garb of the nurse.

It was notorious that a great number of prostitutes dressed as
nurses were functioning behind the Russian front and even in the
scene of operations. In Berlin, as Iwan Bloch reported, at a physi-
cians' meeting shortly after the war, a considerable number of
prostitutes under the mask of nurses were arrested by the police.
To weaken his allegations somewhat Iwan Bloch reminded his audi-
ence that in peace times also the raiment of the nurse had fre-
quently been employed by prostitutes. In a German legal paper
for 19 1 5 we find a statement of the Chief Justice Stendahl con-

62 THE SEXUAL HISTORY OF THE WORLD WAR

cerning the protection of the nurses' garb which was so frequently
being abused. The complaint was there made that very frequently
people would appear in this outfit who certainly were pursuing
very different ends from what their professional uniforms entitled
them to perform. All sorts of commercial and swindling practices
were abetted during the war period by the employment of this
outfit. Thus a certain publishing firm distributed its productions
of a rather frivolous nature through sixty girls who went from
house to house dressed in nurses' uniforms.

It may be advisable, in considering the erotic determinants of
nursing, to distinguish between cases in which this activity was a
means to an end and such to which it was an end in itself. In the
first case, where the nurse conserved her activity as being a road to
a definite goal, this goal can be said to have been an erotic one.
Thus many a girl, who before the war was for one reason or another
unable to achieve the happiness of a good bourgeois marriage, was
impelled by the hope of getting a man more easily as a result of
her nursing activities. And, as a matter of fact, this did actually
happen in a great number of cases. Nevertheless it was this fact
which to some extent contributed to the evil reputation of the
nurses.

During the years of the war many stories were current concern-
ing the self-sacrificing care and devotion which the nurses ex-
pended upon the wounded, the love which developed in the ensuing
convalescence between the grateful young soldier and the woman
rejoicing in her opportunity to be of service, the whole episode
finally culminating in marriage. However, as a matter of fact, these
stories very frequently had quite a different ending. Far more
numerous were the number of these instances where the nurse saw
all her devotion and love and self-sacrifice misused, rejected and
abandoned Many a nurse was deceived in her calculation of nursing
activity as a bridge to marriage. It may be that there were numerous
cases of the sort reported by a soldier at the front who described at
great length the suicide of a nurse whose offer of marriage had been
rejected by an officer after he had had intimate relations with her.
This soldier had been part of the corps that had buried this un-
happy woman at the military cemetery at Guise. It seems to us
that this case is more or less typical and that numerous other cases
of this sort happened not only at the front but also in the hinter-
land For those women also who hoped to achieve more suitable
conditions for the seizure of a bit of love the profession of nursing

EROTICISM OF NURSES

was a means to an erotic end. We are concerned in this case for
the most part with virgins or spinsters, half or totally withered,
for whom the hospital filled with men of all sorts was an incompara-
ble opportunity. In his novel, Pastor's Anna, Henel has given us a
picture of the motives that impelled an exceedingly strait-laced
daughter of the pastor of a city in eastern Prussia to become a
nurse. He points out there that the elderly maiden, who otherwise
would have dared only to indulge in silent and tearful dreams con-
cerning the appearance and form of a man, was now working at a
surgical station in the most delicate situations and without any
qualm or hesitation was manipulating naked male bodies. Of course
there was a certain amount of bravery attached to working at this
war station but at the same time it afforded her a certain satisfac-
tion. She thought less that war was dreadful because it could inflict
horrible wounds, and much more of the fact that it permitted
women to come into contact with so many men without flinching
at all.

In those cases where the care of the wounded was an end in itself
the selflessness and self-sacrifice quality of many magnanimous
women bore very noteworthy fruits. Of course there was no lack
of heroic deeds among these women which contributed considerably
to the construction of legends concerning these nurses. But while
we will admit this fact and do not abate one iota of respect for
these contributions, nevertheless we want to take a little more time
to investigate the sexual-psychological side of the problem; we
therefore avoid giving any statistical estimates concerning the num-
ber of cases in which pure love of humanity or genuine patriotism
can be regarded as sufficient motives.

There is an amazing amount of proof to establish the fact that
the care of the sick was not only a means but also an end in itself
in the vast number of cases colored with a very libidinous streak.
Protagonists of the theory that in woman all the expressions of life
are far more deeply rooted and anchored in sexuality than in man,
may find in such cases support for their position. Without taking
sides in this question we will just let some of these cases speak for
themselves. In Dr. Wilhelm Steckel's outstanding book, Psycho-
sexueller Infantilismus, which contains a very rich collection of
case histories, we find the following assertion:

"A very interesting narcissistic type is constituted by those people
who just can't bear to see the happiness of other people in their
presence. These abnormal individuals want to mean something,

64 THE SEXUAL HISTORY OF THE WORLD WAR

want to do something for others, want to help them, want ^ to
console them, want to expend love upon them. These narcissists
love only themselves but they are enamored of the position of the
love-expender or the love distributor. During the war I could ob-
serve numerous examples of this type among the nurses. . . . The
following is an example of this condition. A very intelligent nurse
has given me the following description of her condition: T am
forty-eight years old and I can very calmly confess to you that
there is no joy as great for me as the sight of gratitude in the eyes
of a man whom I am nursing. This joy is like an intoxication. It is
the only orgasm which I have been able to feel in life. Love I have
never desired but I have always yearned for gratitude. ... I have
had numerous relationships but I have always given myself out of
pity and out of a feeling that the man might be made happy. I
confess, too, that I am proud, even vain of my talent as a nurse.
I want to be loved and admired by the patients. I want to pass
through the ward like a mild and generous fairy expending love
and conferring happiness.' "

In addition we find in the relevant literature ample proof for the
inordinate or abnormal desire on the part of the nurse for seeing
sexually flavored spectacles, and also for a certain voyeur condition
with mysoophilic components, as well as a certain sadistic nuance in
their activity. A splendid presentation of all these factors has been
given by, perhaps, the best student of this question, the French
physician, Dr. Huot. Concerning his nurses he has written the
following :

"In the rather modest circle of activity which was allotted to
them, their eagerness for fire made insatiable demands that were
only satisfied when they had one transport of wounded after an-
other and they were sad and jealous when the nearby service sta-
tion had more customers than they. Even more significant is the
attraction exercised upon all alike by the tragedy-laden atmosphere
of the operating room. It was their highest desire to attend opera-
tions and in this they were absolutely blind and deaf to the worse
sort of impacts upon their senses, the groans of the wounded, the
moans of agony, they never for a moment lost their cold-blooded-
ness or skill. With equal passion these young women and girls gave
themselves to the bandaging of the most frightful wounds and the
most grievously wounded without shuddering at a single contact
with the most disgusting and exciting circumstances. It is very
difficult to reconcile this devotion of the nurses to the wounded

EROTICISM OF NURSES

and especially the grievously wounded, with the legend of the weak-
ness and over-susceptibility of women. I may be permitted to recall
that a very significant personality has used in this connection the
word sadism. Modesty forbids me to say anything in contradiction
that has come from so distinguished a quarter. Nevertheless, I
would rather see in this an expression of that tendency of the
French women which is directed with all possible energy against
the unsatisfying reputation of the weak sex which they regard as
extremely annoying and undesirable. . . . But still another point
must be emphasized— that mysterious feeling, that somewhat per-
verse disturbance which, when it arises, stirs up certain women
with the prickling compulsion of a physical desire and impels them
against their will to seek a nervous excitation which they have
never yet felt and which they hope to find in the odor of blood
and in the sight and touch of palpitating male flesh. Perhaps this
is the best point to say something concerning the oft-mentioned
connection between female sadism and war. From another side too,
the thesis is supported that the hyper-activity induced by the war,
with the resulting uninterrupted strain of the nerves, called forth
in many women with a predisposition for that sort of thing, a higher
irritability of the reproductive centers which always reacts so
promptly to the foremost considerations of the organic disturbance.
This fact appears to me to be undeniable in respect to the civil
female population at the front — a consideration of whom from this
standpoint is especially interesting."

Aside from the great excitement induced by the continuous pres-
sure of danger and of the thundering of the cannonade, it appears
as though the irritating smoke of the constant shooting which had
settled down upon all the cities and villages adjacent to the firing
line had filled them with a certain fluid, with a certain intoxicating
poison which set these women into a state of tremendous excite-
ment. In one of our most beautiful places the female population
made the most violent and passionate protest against the removal
of a certain division of soldiers and flooded the military authorities
with reproaches, and nearly rioted to keep these soldiers within
their own walls. We might recall the case of the young lady of
Rheims whose violent amorous ecstasy was one night disturbed by
a terrific bombardment. The ardent young woman would by no
means desist from her activity and insisted upon completing the
amorous process, clinging almost insanely to her partner so that he
could scarcely breathe; he had to use all his power to free himself

66 THE SEXUAL HISTORY OF THE WORLD WAR

from this woman and fled to a cellar. The odd fact that the nature
of war atrocities and bloody deeds have an erotic effect upon
women was made long before the war and was merely confirmed
during it. Throughout the war there were many parallels to the
execution of Damiens reported by Casanova, which the ladies
of Paris observed from their windows in a veritable paroxysm of
erotic delight and amused themselves throughout the day with the
most terrific suffering of the poor tortured creature. And while we
refuse to believe entirely the tales of German prisoners-of-war of
being insulted, abused and manhandled by women during their
journey through Paris and other French cities, we can very well
believe that certain of these sadistic excesses — as exposure of the
rear portion, spitting on them, manhandling them with sticks and
umbrellas, etc. — may very well have occurred.

There is one more question to be answered: how the men, espe-
cially the patients, reacted to the excitements and lusts of the
nurses. We have already seen that corresponding to the voyeuses,
the soldier manifested a definite modesty, or, as we might more
correctly say, a lack of correlative exhibitionism.

During the war years public opinion treated the nurses nearly
always from the erotic point of view but in a thoroughly ambiv-
alent fashion. On the one hand the transfigured form of the nurse
was put in the center of every idealistic cult which was nevertheless
thoroughly libidinous; and on the other side it seemed that a special
pleasure was taken in besmirching this ideal figure, of attributing all
her activities to thoroughly erotic motives in a much more compre-
hensive way than anything we have here attempted. In general the
impression created was that the nurse had to be either an angel or
a whore. That the evil reputation proved itself in general to be
stronger than the idealizing tendency is partly due to the physicians
who in general had a very derogatory opinion concerning their
female help. In the dialogue of the two Austrian physicians quoted
above from Karl Kraus's novel the nurses are called simply Weiber
(women), which corresponds quite well to the general practice
during the World War. Even the common soldiers had but little
more respect for the sisters, an attitude which all the propaganda in
behalf of the nurses at home could not alter. It is not impossible
that one of the motives for this disrespect was a kind of erotic
jealousy, for in a number of respects the conduct of the great
number of these nurses was not such as to call forth the sympathies
of the ordinary soldier. Any soldier who had ever been at the front

EROTICISM OF NURSES

knew that the nurses adored the officers, that in many cases they
openly showed that they felt themselves above the common pa-
tient, by a class-consciousness that was quite unfounded, feeling
themselves to be in the same class as the officers. What was worse
everybody knew about the amours of the nurses which most fre-
quently were carried on with the officers rather than with the
common men.

The sadistic pleasure of the nurses in drastic excitations of the
senses, of which service in the hospital offered more than enough,
enables us to understand the desire of many nurses to get as near to
the firing line as possible. That this tendency was not something
accidental, but somewhat more or less symptomatic of the times
can be gathered from a number of similar reports. Thus Professor
Hohenegg of Vienna wrote that a great portion of the volunteer
nurses requested service at the front and Dr. Huot was able to
report the same conditions concerning his nurses who had already
been through the fire. "Among many," he said, "who had been
placed in an erethic condition by the continual bombardment, the
wish became very strong to serve in the very front line. . . . And
how these nurses cursed their sex which prohibited them from
sharing dangers and fame by the side of the men, and their inability
to be admitted to the actual scene of operations in the same way
as men."

Actually it happened repeatedly during the war that nurses
would spend some time on the very front line of battle. Thus a few
women, most of Hungarian descent, spent weeks in the trenches
with the Austrian army. Then too the English nurses had a weak-
ness for being photographed with the bullets whistling around
their ears and not in artistic or womanly costume, but in the mili-
tary khaki. Of course the danger to these women was in no way as
great as that of the French, Galician and Belgian women who had
remained home and who had permitted themselves to be buried
under the ruins of their houses.

From French sources we know of one case where an English
nurse spent considerable time at the firing line. An officer of the
French general staff, who had had the pleasure to dine with her at
the table of the Belgian ambassador, M. de Broquer, reported that
this girl was the charming daughter of Lord F. She had spent five
months on the front line as nurse. In all this period she had stayed
quite close to the trenches in order to get to the sick at once and to
nurse them. She was a very striking figure in her khaki, yellow

68 THE SEXUAL HISTORY OF THE WORLD WAR

boots and military cap. And she was just as gracious as she was
pretty and hence her value was recognized on the whole northern
front where she took part in the battles of the Yser, and also near
Dixmude. Her favorites were the marines. It was most delightful
to hear her prattle argot with her English accent. "J'aime beaucoup
ces petits fusiliers: il savez tres bien 'zigouiller' les Bodies!"

The following case deserves some consideration. When the Ger-
mans captured a detachment of Russians near the Naroc Sea they
found among their prisoners a uniformed nurse of about nineteen
attired in male costume. When she was asked why she was fighting
at the side of the men instead of serving as a nurse, the young lady
replied that in Russia the nurses had a very evil reputation and
hence she preferred to put on a uniform. Another Russian nurse by
the name of Iwanova is said to have participated in a certain bitter
battle on the northwestern front, and when all of the officers had
fallen she rallied the retreating soldiers at the decisive moment,
gave them new courage and stormed an enemy trench. She died
pierced through by a bullet and received posthumously the George
cross. The French press extolled her as a heroine whereas the
Germans branded her deed as a crime against the law of nations.

In other cases too we find women on the firing line and even in
trenches, particularly on the Western Front. According to re-
sponsible reports, in 191 5 the German soldiers on this front fre-
quently heard dance music issuing from the French lines or from
the little settlements behind the firing lines. Other circumstances
make it appear that occasionally women came to the front. Thus
actresses from Paris or other French cities spent some time in the
vicinity of the front after it was realized that the war was to last
longer than expected. These visits by actresses appear to have been
quite frequent in the Austrian war theater. In the novel, Soldaten
Marien, the author depicts vividly the erotic effects which the
presence of a singer in the Russian trenches exercised upon the
German soldiers on the other side. "All waited for the miracle
which came late at night. The voice began to sing again— that
strange woman's voice on the Russian side began to sing again.
Slowly and gently she sang again and again. All the soldiers felt
their hearts in their throats. Could so much sweetness reside in one
woman's voice. . . . Barfelde was no longer leaning against the
tree. He stood and pressed his hands together. How beautiful this
woman ought to be! He saw her, her sorrowful eyes and sweet red
mouth . . ."

EROTICISM OF NURSES

Occasionally too visits of a family to the front took place. Thus
an Austrian officer has informed us that in 19 15 there came to his
station directly behind the front line a strikingly pretty and ele-
gantly clad lady who requested permission to visit her husband, an
active Austrian lieutenant who was then on the firing line. When
the lady, a typical wife of an Austrian officer, was asked why she
had such a peculiar desire, she voluntarily informed the com-
mander that a slight accident had befallen her at home. Her effer-
vescent temperament had led her to commit an error which had not
remained without its consequences; by meeting with her husband
now she desired to legitimize that unpredictable sequel of her ardor.
She received the necessary permission, thereby eradicating an im-
pending tragedy.

During the war French newspapers printed the report of a
French soldier serving in the field of battle concerning the visit to
the front line of a French woman from Brittany. "One could
scarcely imagine how much energy was locked up in such a little
woman. She came from the farthest corner of Brittany in order to
place into the arms of her husband a child who had been born
after his departure. She had sworn that he would just have to see
his child. The thought that he might die without seeing it had tor-
tured her brain; and so one fine day she set out on her journey. She
overcame all hindrances, slipped by all guards and finally got to the
trenches. One evening we were washing our dishes and were pre-
paring the straw for our beds when one of our comrades let out a
yell, 'My Louise!' It was she. Without a word she put into his
arms the little baby wrapped all in white. He scarcely dared to
kiss it. And as for us, many of us have seen exciting spectacles
during the war but nothing like this. Many wept. He, the father,
was pale and speechless as though a gentle bullet had bored through
his heart."

Finally on certain occasions women were forced into the dangers
of war against their will and compelled to render some form of
service that happened to be necessary. Thus in 19 18 many manual
workers were driven into the very trenches on the southwest Aus-
trian front and suffered many casualties.

The question of female soldiers during the World War — of the
voluntary participation in the war by women — we shall treat in a
later chapter.

Chapter 4

SENSUALITY IN THE TRENCHES

Normal Sex Life Impossible in Trenches — German Physicians Extol Ab-
stinence—" Steel Bath of the Nerves"— Origin of Sex Sublimation Theory
—French Institution of "Marraines" — Sexual Abnormalities Due to War
— Masturbation a Necessary Evil — Case Histories of Onanism — Profanity
and Lewdness of Speech — Obscene Songs— Pornographic Photographs-
Indecent Literature— Plaster Phalli Found in Trenches— Erotic Dreams-
Excerpts from War Diaries— Tattooing and its Sexual Origin— Pleasure in
Excremental Functions — Latrine Stories — Unnatural Sex Satisfactions —
Anal Eroticism of Soldiers— Sodomy— Instances of Bestiality—Impotence
Resulting from Enforced Continence — Ejaculatio Prcecox — Serious Prob-
lem of Sex Hunger

THAT the war, at the begnining, could appear to many as a way
to erotic liberation and unlimited expression of sensuality points to
one of the numerous errors that springs from complete ignorance
of modern warfare. Had people been able to realize what war
actually signified, humanity would at least have been spared the
illusion, and the disappointment which inevitably followed. Instead
we find in this connection, as in almost every other, an almost
terrifying ignorance with which human beings met the greatest
catastrophe in their history. It was necessary for the war, with all
its frightful reality, to show up, in tragic-comic fashion, the slight
possibility of release for the erotic impulse as compared to the ex-
tremely farflung expectations on that subject.

For the majority of those who participated in the war and did
not have the opportunity of spending the years of the world con-
flagration in the amorous paradises provided at various military
war-stations, the same thing happened to the much touted business
of erotic freedom as happened to the Italian futurists with their
much eulogized freedom of action in whose name their prophet,
Marinetti, had demanded the entrance of Italy into the war. It
turned out that in this war there could be no question of freedom
of action or freedom in any sense; that modern war was inhuman
discipline completely devaluating and deflating all notions of hu-
man dignity, and that it signified nothing so much as the restraint
of all free expression in all matters, including the sexual life. In
the trenches the common soldier ceased to be a human being; but
what is much worse, is that through the altered circumstances of
life he was compelled to stop being a man. In the trenches there
was no place for sexual life, at least not for a normal one. Here one

SENSUALITY IN THE TRENCHES

became an animal, only without the right of the animal to enjoy the
free satisfaction of its instincts.

It is as significant as it is sad that in this case also science will-
ingly placed itself in the service of war. German physicians espe-
cially were extremely concerned in singing hymns of praise to
abstinence with an enthusiasm that was more than a little sus-
picious. In France, on the other hand, a systematic treatment of this
question was avoided and in England the old tradition of publicly
avoiding, as much as possible, all discussion of sexual problems was
maintained. In German medicine there had even before been
savants who had espoused the theory that sexual abstinence was
not only innocuous but even salubrious. At the beginning of the
war German public opinion frequently cited the belief of German
physicians that abstinence would actually produce very bene-
ficial results as continence would be tantamount to treasuring up
the best powers of the body. Now this might have been true had
the war lasted, as was expected at the beginning, for a few months
or, at the most, a year. But when the duration of the war was pro-
tracted far beyond the original expectations, quite a different con-
dition became apparent; and so we must reckon among the most
evil and deplorable consequences of the war such as war prosti-
tution and the spread of veneral diseases, also the enforced absti-
nence. No one will be surprised that literature gave considerable
assistance to the scientific apostles of abstinence whose patriotism
far exceeded their scientific truth. Everyone knows that, especially
in the early period of the war, literature and journalism stood
right under the banner of the ideology of the war in that it suf-
fered itself to be entirely influenced by it and then returned this
influence strengthened by its own professional contribution. Medi-
cal science espoused the cause of hygienic abstinence. Literature
and the press assumed the view that from the war there would
result a tremendous sublimation of the sexual impulse. This went
so far that even such a reputable investigator of the erotic realm
as Eulenburg, who died during the war, coined the frequently
quoted expression of the steel bath of the nerves. Let us quote one
example of the literary expression of this point of view. In an
article called War and Eroticism, Hans Natonek gave expression to
the following viewpoint which was characteristic of the sentiments
espoused and propagated by the literature of that period.

"If one regards the eroticism of man as something to which the
subject spirit is more relevant and important than the object

72 THE SEXUAL HISTORY OF THE WORLD WAR

woman, then the war, with its completely non-erotic atmosphere,
with its hard, sweet necessity of being womanless, seems to have
been peculiarly created to restore the dreamy, mild, yearning hun-
ger of true eroticism. Where formerly sex had been an ugly, soulless,
rather brutish and almost mechanically sober indulgence, the situa-
tion as a result of enforced abstinence became quite different. For
months there was no woman to be seen and this alone would have
to make the most gross of men somewhat finer, and the most
matter-of-fact ones a bit deeper. Formerly the en j oyer would have
to do nothing more than to stretch out his hand for that which
he desired, and so his pleasure and indulgence became for him
something habitual, dull or almost superfluous. Life was lived in
an erotic atmosphere and one had continually to talk in order to
believe in it. Renunciation and the tension induced by want were
unknown. Erotic culture in which people had come to believe that
they were living, had, as a matter of fact, been destroyed through
the continuous presence and possession of woman. But during the
war many millions of men were torn out of their erotic mechani-
zation and placed into a form of life in which woman became so
distant and so wonderfully strange as to be reached only in the
dream of yearning. In this way every erotic form of life is simpli-
fied, and becomes more honest and genuine. It almost appears as
though the relationship of man and woman in all its fineness can
only become obvious when woman is lacking."

In general the patriotic literature of the first few months of the
war was greatly occupied, and that in the most repugnant fashion,
in making good the sins committed before the war — namely of
placing eroticism at the center of all poetry. If in pre-war days
literature had seated Eros upon Pegasus, now everything was done
not only to tear him down from his steed but even to have him
stamped to death by the hoofs. Thus shortly after the outbreak of
the war, the noted Viennese, Hans Miiller, wrote a treatise which
may be regarded as a masterful example of this hypocritical reces-
sion from the religion of sensual love. He has described the life of a
soldier in the first person and says among other things the fol-
lowing:

"Now I lie upon a stone at night and fear to ask myself what
tremendous physical and spiritual mystery has been engendered
within me. ... If Liane were now to bend over me, Liane the
beautiful, for whom I once yearned with all the fibers of my being,
if she were now to let her golden hair fall over me I would brush

SENSUALITY IN THE TRENCHES

it from my eyes in order not to miss the first light of dawn which
will be the signal for our drive on Ostrowa Palcze."

To this effusion of patriotic misogyny the brave pacifist and
Nobel prize winner, Dr. Albert H. Fried, replied that the author
of that canting drivel was unfit for military service and had excogi-
tated this yarn about regeneration of his being from a point no
nearer the battlefield than his club chair.

This theory of sex-sublimation by war, a bastard-hybrid of
psychoanalysis and patriotism, can perhaps be answered best in the
words of Freud himself: "The task of the control of so mighty an
impulse as the sexual one, which calls into action all the powers of
the human being, the control by sublimation through the shunting
of erotic impulses from the sexual drive to higher cultural goals, is
possible only for a minority and even for them only temporarily."
Furthermore, those who insist that war brings in its wake a move-
ment of exalting influences have forgotten to answer the very
important question, namely, just what higher cultural aims the war
can purvey to those who participate in it.

The sublimation of the sexual impulse soon turned out to be
nothing more than a dream and a very ugly one. The soldiers who,
in rain and frost, surrounded by death, cowered in their trenches
like living corpses, instead of idealizing woman spoke of her, accord-
ing to the testimony of all participants of the war, in the most
filthy and profane fashion. We may anticipate and say that this
extreme nastiness of speech constituted a sort of substitute satis-
faction— that when one could not actually have the love object to
deal with, one could at least brutalize it with words.

The few possibilities which the war offered to maintain erotic
connections between the front and the hinterland were, as might
be expected, thoroughly exploited. For the soldier who could spend
weeks in the dugouts a tiny gift from home, sent by some beloved
hand, would have a very definite erotic value and significance. This
fact was quite clearly recognized and all sorts of efforts were made
to organize and maintain this erotic contact between the women
who had remained at home and the men who were living under
fire. Particularly at the outset, when the enthusiasm for war was
at its highest, the women knitted socks and sweaters and sent gift
packages to their loved ones at the front. Everyone who was alive
at the time will remember the abuses of fashion which that time
brought with it. Fried has written that in Vienna diamond-be-
decked women would sit in cafes and knit socks, or ride in street

74 THE SEXUAL HISTORY OF THE WORLD WAR

cars knitting sweaters. In every land the institution of sending gift
packages to the front became the vogue. Since these gifts were
frequently destined for unknown recipients they created an erotic
contact between the front and the hinterland, a contact which was
considerably strengthened by the widely disseminated love corre-
spondence.

There was another institution that became fashionable during
the war, practically in every state, but which reached its most
comical developments in France where the institution of the mar-
raines (god-mother or adoptive mother) was administratively or-
ganized. The Parisian woman who wished to participate in this
social game, which was all too frequently an erotic one, turned to
the military authorities who recommended to her some filleul
(foster-son) worthy of her attention. The French were very proud
of this pretty invention. Maurice Donnay, who wrote a book on
the role of the French woman in the war, termed this institution
of marrainage as one of the organizations in which one could recog-
nize all the nuances of the French heart and spirit. It arose in
the first months of the war, in the autumn of 19 14 at the time of
the battle of the Marne. In October of that year the enemy armies
had penetrated very deeply, and preparations were made for the
bad season of the year with its short days and long nights. Every
French woman who had a son, husband or friend at the battlefield
bought wool and knitted warm clothes which she sent him, along
with numerous letters. Suddenly generous people remembered that
there were soldiers without relatives, and so the French woman
was called upon to act the part of mother to these unfortunate men.
The women complied with the summons, and grandmothers,
mothers and schoolgirls took on foster-sons. Donnay has prepared
for us an authentic example of a letter in which this ceremony of
adoption was discussed: "Mon cher ami, on me dit, que vous etes
suel, que personne ne s'occupe de vous. Eh bien, sache qu'd partir
de ce moment vous avez quelqu'une qui s'interesse a vous. Pour
commencer , je vous envoie un petit paquet . . ."

It is quite obvious that as time went on this harmless tone could
not be maintained in further relationships of the foster-mother and
the adopted son, considering the erotic temperament of the French
woman. Letters circulated between these newly acquired relations
of a sort that cannot be quoted here. It is interesting to note that
the French spirit did not hesitate to score the abuses of this in-
stitution, patriotism or no patriotism. At the beginning they con-

SENSUALITY IN THE TRENCHES

tented themselves with prophesying that there would be mass mar-
riages between foster-mothers and their foster-sons, or with de-
scribing the astonishment of the Parisian woman when about to
make the acquaintance of her foster-son released on a furlough.
She discovers that he is a particularly black Congo or an Indo-
Chinese; but afterwards they poured all the fires of their scorn on
the institution which could fall a prey to so many abuses. Dr.
Huot indicated how this institution gradually decayed. The insti-
tution of foster-mothers, which at the beginning was so entirely
selfless, gradually acquired a sentimental streak, at least among
young women and girls. The uneducated and neglected poilu in his
capacity as foster-son began to slip from popularity and soon be-
came relegated exclusively to old women and little children.

It is a curious fact, but a true one nevertheless, that letters from
home frequently had erotic effects upon their recipients. The ab-
normality in the sexual conditions aggravated the general feeling
of dissatisfaction almost to the point of madness and induced psy-
copathic mental states and depressions which were frequently erro-
neously attributed to fighting alone. (Lowenfeld's Sexualleben und
Nervenleiden contains considerable material on this subject.) Thus
a patient in the psychiatric ward of a hospital related that each
time he would receive a letter from home he would have a pollution.
Furthermore the same patient related that he would also have
ejaculations when he was on a post awaiting an attack by the
enemy, or whenever he would witness an altercation among his
own comrades. The smallest excitement would induce a painful
erection — against which he had long struggled in vain and from
which he finally sought release by masturbation. He assured the
authorities that before the war he had never manifested any sexual
abnormalities.

That the evil of self-abuse (or self-satisfaction) was widespread
in every army and not infrequently had unwholesome consequences
is not to be established from statistics, but the judgments of all
military surgeons lend great probability to our assertion. Let us
quote from Dr. P. Lissmann who has devoted a monograph to the
influences of the war upon the sex life of men. "During the war a
great role was played from the sexo-neurological point of view, by
masturbation (ipsalind). In peace times this practice is exceedingly
common. It is assumed that ninety-six per cent of all young people
in the second decade of their life masturbate. But during the war it
became far more widespread, according to private and professional

76 THE SEXUAL HISTORY OF THE WORLD WAR

records. The biologically imperative sexual impulse of the soldiers,
whether in active service or reserve regiments, could not, in many
cases, be eliminated or suppressed by religious or ethical scruples,
or by fear of infection. On this point I have questioned hundreds of
men of all nationalities, and in general, have received the answer
that was expected under the circumstances— that there was current
an enforced or substitute masturbation. Indeed not a few older
men, who at home were accustomed to regular sex intercourse, con-
fessed that they had chosen this way of escape from the torture
of the senses, to avoid the scruples of conscience, and the dangers
consequent upon illegitimate sexual intercourse. In these masturba-
tors it was not at all a question of abnormal, psychopathic constitu-
tion. As far as the consequences of masturbation are concerned
(which, while not without their evil effects, have, nevertheless,
been greatly exaggerated) changes in character and temperament,
melancholic depressions, etc.— I have not had enough exact experi-
ence of them in the field. The customary self-reproach and certain
neurasthenic symptom complexes were observable in a few cases
which had masturbated excessively. In general I shared Hirsch-
feld's impression that the elastic nerves of the healthy, strong man
can easily overcome this single alteration of sex satisfaction.

"Moreover, the practice of masturbation was virtually impossible
for my regiment while it was in position. Whoever has been in the
field with front-line divisions knows the dense concentration of
men in the wooded positions which never permits men, and espe-
cially young officers, to remain alone. The various military duties
at the post, sentry duty, the public nature of the latrines, the com-
mon mess, make it next to impossible to be alone and hence ex-
tremely difficult to go through the motions of peripheral, mechanical
masturbation. Of course it is impossible to guess what prohibitive
or restraining influence the public life of the military camp would
have on psychic masturbation which, in its nervous sequela?, is
much more grave. I want to adduce an illustrative case to render
concrete this condition which Hirschfeld has termed sexual hyper-
esthesia. A certain strongly sexed man of thirty gave himself up
to erotic imagination so long and intensively that ejaculation would
result without any external stimulation of the genital organs. He
suffered considerably from the customary masturbationists' hypo-
chondria which drove him to believe in the well-known desiccation
of the spinal marrow. This, however, did not hinder him from sur-
rendering again and again to his erotic fantasies."

SENSUALITY IN THE TRENCHES 77

The great number of erotic stories that were circulated during
the war, both among the troops at the field and also at home, give
proof of the wide dissemination of the practice. For example, one
of the best known epigrams of the war was the statement of an old
Austrian Landsturm man, "Formerly my wife was my right hand,
now my right hand in my wife." A former Hungarian officer has de-
scribed to us the case of a Bosnian who served in his army and
had to be given a furlough and sent home because he would, in
keeping with his low mental state, masturbate before all his com-
rades. When this unusually strong man returned from his fortnight
furlough, during which he had had normal intercourse with his
wife, he had grown strong and healthy and regained all his former
power.

A former French lieutenant has told us of a similar case. One
day, as he was inspecting the dugouts, he came to a dimly lit
corner where a tremendous crowd of poilus and a mysterious fluid
caused him to stop at the threshold to see what was going on. Un-
seen he observed that they were standing around a young private
(from the suburbs of Paris to judge by his accent) who was re-
citing something with the greatest elan and the most impressive
vividness. The Parisian was describing his bridal night in the gayest
colors, accompanying his story with appropriate movements of hand,
body and head, and the most ludicrous tones, even to the imitation
of a woman's voice. The excitation into which he had gotten him-
self was communicated to his comrades. "As far as I could make
out in the darkness, they seemed to be drawn closer and closer to
him and to hang onto his words. Finally, on tiptoe, I crept nearer.
After my eyes had grown accustomed to the semi-darkness, I was
able to see clearly the purpose and effect of the vivid recitation of
this youth from Panama (argot for Paris). The delighted and rav-
ished poilus were standing around with unbuttoned trousers. . . ."

It is certainly no exaggeration to see in the unhygienic effects of
onanism practiced in the field, a direct consequence of the absti-
nence induced by the war, inasmuch as most of those war mas-
turbators were people who, under normal circumstances, would not
have fallen prey to self-pollution. In his Winter lager einer ge-
schlagenen Armee Egon Erworn Kisch has related the significant
fact that, as soon as the army entered a place where normal sex
intercourse was possible, those soldiers, who continued even now to
indulge in the common substitute of self-satisfaction, were mocked
and jeered at by their comrades who forthwith took advantage of

78 THE SEXUAL HISTORY OF THE WORLD WAR

the opportunity for heterosexual intercourse. Very frequently the
masturbation practiced by soldiers must have led to those twilight
states in which various military crimes, like desertion, for example,
were committed.

That under certain circumstances war itself induced masturba-
tion is difficult to prove, but may, none the less, be assumed. We
need only remember the erotic effects which certain war situa-
tions, as, for example, bombardment, exert upon the female psyche
in order to conclude that, in like situations, similar reactions can
be observed among men. It is an established historical fact that in
the midst of the battle of Abensberg, Napoleon had a woman
brought into his tent and had intercourse with her. In this con-
nection we might mention the sadistic major concerning whom
Bruno Vogel has reported as masturbating while observing a mili-
tary encounter through field glasses. Even if this figure were a ficti-
tious one, it is still true psychologically — just as true as the figure
in de Sade's writing, a century earlier, who got an orgasm when
Vesuvius erupted. Lissmann has reported the following case: "A
thirty-year-old man, otherwise normal neurologically, used to get
ejaculations, without erections or passion, during strong artillery
fire. During continued firing he would get two or three ejaculations
without showing any particular signs of lassitude or exhaustion. He
had also come across another man of twenty-five who, during the
bombardment of a town, had taken refuge in a cellar, and, while
cowering there in terror, had repeated ejaculations without erection.

But it must not be supposed that masturbation was the only form
of substitute satisfaction to which soldiers resorted in their sex
hunger. Even during peace time the cursing and profanity of the
soldiery is proverbial; and need we spend any time in pointing out
the drastic way in which the sex impulse manifests itself in this
coprolagnic activity? Hence, it is no wonder that in war, profanity,
lewdness and nastiness of speech were more widespread than ever
before, according to all observers. The speech of the garrison is, in
general, a mixture of expressions which designate details of the
digestive process or sexual intercourse. In his study of the ethical
and moral effects of the war upon Germany, Baumgarten cites a
letter sent him from the trenches by one of his former students:
"Is there any possibility that in the slime of the trenches there is an
increase in the power of the soul to keep itself pure? Few young
people have so strong an inner life that they can retain the purity
of their souls by their own power. It is almost a year now that we

SENSUALITY IN THE TRENCHES 79

have been without the companionship of modest, noble women or
girls, a factor which does much to equilibriate passion and ennoble
the soul. To be sure, we have the will to remain pure and modest,
even as we have the will to be victorious. But, just as without
proper leadership, we are doomed to failure no matter how brave
and courageous we may be, so also in the matter of morality we
are doomed to defeat, despite all the exertion of our will-power if
we lack spiritual and ethical guidance. I myself have had the experi-
ence, despite all my efforts to the contrary, of again and again
wallowing in filth, until one comes to regard it as a necessary con-
sequence of the war to spice one's speech with the proper flavor of
bawdiness and foulness."

A not inconsiderable part of soldiers' jokes and songs refer to
sexual life. For this there are numberless examples, of which we
quote the following which saw print in the novel Infanterist
Perhobstler:

Es steht ein Elejant am Titicaca See

Der steht und hebt sein Schwanzlein in die H'oh.

Laura, Laura, wenn ich bei dir steh!

So geht mir's wie dem Elejant am Titicaca See.

It is true, of course, that a large portion of these songs arose long
before the war but most of the poems and songs composed during
the war were of this sort; which is a fact not without interest
psychologically as showing how modern technical warfare demands
a great deal of the body but offers little of value to the moral spirit
of man. How else explain the amazing fulfillment during the World
War of the ancient adage that during war the Muses are silent?
However, the war did influence the creation of pacifist songs and
verses on the miseries of a soldier's life as, for example, the song
so popular among the American soldiers: Mademoiselle of Armen-
tieres. The heroine of this song, by the way, was a real character,
a pretty midinette who worked in a laundry during the day and
spent her evenings entertaining American soldiers at the Black Cat
Caji. But more commonly old songs, opera hits or popular ballads
were sung with certain textual changes, practically always of an
erotic sort. The novel Perhobstler, referred to above, contains ex-
amples of this type of erotic textual emendations which cannot be
quoted here.

Another form of substitute satisfaction, besides lewd chatter and
songs, was the pornographic products with which the soldiers were

8o THE SEXUAL HISTORY OF THE WORLD WAR

provided. Early in 191 5 the Hungarian papers expressed their in-
tense dissatisfaction at the thriving export trade in pornographic
(especially masochistic) photographs. Accordingly to the testimony
of various participants in the war, these pictures were very wide-
spread and contributed much to help the inhabitants of the dug-
outs in their enforced continence. For the most part these pictures
were of the sort well known to us even in peace times — the most
shameless pornographic photographs which are still vended in the
streets of Paris and advertised in many newspapers and journals all
over the world.

Furthermore, the soldiers were kept supplied with erotic reading
matter. We may refer here to a French advertisement captioned,
Pour nos soldats, under which were advertised the most depraved
kind of pornographic literature including a work of the well-known
sadistic author who bears the significant nom de plume, Aime Van
Rod. And when the shipment from home stopped, there were other
measures adopted in various places. The German press frequently
printed accounts of women's hats, dresses and underthings being
found in abandoned French trenches, which were later occupied by
German troops. In addition to these mementoes of visits that women
had paid to those places were found photographs of coitus scenes
and phalli of plaster. At a meeting devoted to military medicine,
held at Tubingen in 19 14, a physician, Dr. Gaupp, exhibited a
large phallus, 19.5 c. long and 5.5 cm. in diameter, found in the
knapsack of a French officer. There were all sorts of notions con-
cerning the possible uses of the instrument. Dr. Gaupp asserted
that such instruments had repeatedly been found in the bags of
fallen French soldiers and this had aroused the suspicion in Ger-
man military circles that they were instruments for inflicting brutal
injuries on German women and girls. The questioning of French
wounded elicited no explanation other than that these mysterious
objects were seulment pour rire. Gaupp, however, believed that
this was improbable, for no object so heavy and large would be
forced into a knapsack only for fun. Nor was there much to be
said for the hypothesis that it was used for pederastic purposes.
It seemed much more likely that the object was really a talisman,
only the size and weight of the object were against this explanation.
Perhaps there was a sort of exhibitionism here in which a sexually
perverse person would become excited at the sight of the shame
and insult that women would feel when confronted with the giant
phallus. It was Iwan Bloch's hunch that the purpose of the instru-

SENSUALITY IN THE TRENCHES

ment could be found in a sort of fetishistic substitute reaction.
In the professional circles of Germany, this question aroused con-
siderable interest. It may be likely that this was merely an indi-
vidual find which, in normal times, free from war psychosis, would
not have aroused any great interest or led to such intricate and
fine-spun conclusions concerning French eroticism. In this connec-
tion, it is well to remember that at the same meeting at which
the phallus question came up, Iwan Bloch read an obscene parody
of the French training regulations which had also been found on
the person of a French soldier. Bloch opined that no such produc-
tions could or would be found among the German soldiers. How-
ever, this optimistic guess was utterly contradicted by the late hap-
penings of the war. There was scarcely one trench dugout in which,
during periods of inactivity and comparative rest, the devastating
tedium of a comatose and stupefying vegetativeness was not re-
lieved by erotic titillation. This biological thrill was purveyed to
German and other soldiers frequently by erotic and even obscene
reading matter. A special favorite was the erotic parody of military
orders. There is extant a copy of an album, distributed at the
front in innumerable copies, bearing the title Schweineriade and
containing "the instructions of a corps of Amazons to be organized
in 191 5." There is also extant a pamphlet of similar content en-
titled: Official Orders Concerning the Organization, Practice, Mili-
tary Leadership, etc., of Mobile Field- and Reserve-Houses of Joy.

Naturally the official literature was also interested in satisfying
the demand for erotic reading matter which could be used to while
away many a dismal, ugly hour in the trenches. One war partici-
pant, Clemens Gert, has written an interesting essay on the subject
of erotic literature in the dugouts, its spread, use, quality, etc.
Among other things he says that natural unforced eroticism will
seldom lead to hyper-irritation or excessive excitation of the senses.
It was quite different, however, with regard to the erotic produc-
tion of a writer like Marie Madeleine, whose characters always
manifested some perverse trait or other. It was this type of read-
ing which wrought great havoc upon inexperienced and youthful
minds. The effect of the daily conversations of the men continually
preoccupied with erotic subjects was not nearly so corrupting. Of
course, they did arouse the desire for woman but the desire thus
aroused proceeded in a natural way to its goal, that is, it aimed
directly at the pleasure of love. But the situation was quite dif-
ferent with the characters which Madeleine created. These were

82 THE SEXUAL HISTORY OF THE WORLD WAR

nearly always hysterical in one way or another and dominated by
a perverse instinctual life. Hence, not infrequently, these erotic
productions poisoned young minds even before they had come to
their first actual sex experience. It will be no exaggeration to desig-
nate Madeleine's activity as being downright poisonous for it
aroused young and hot-blooded people to a pitch of abnormal ex-
citement and virtually created unnatural desires.

No special emphasis is necessary, of course, in regard to the fact
that the fantasy of these hungry men, erotically inflamed by this
type of reading, some of whom had never yet experienced a love
pleasure, should result in various erotic dreams. This will appear
perfectly comprehensible even to the reader who knows next to
nothing of psychoanalysis. Innumerable war diaries, drawings and
productions of war literature tell us that the dreams of the com-
batants were drenched with lust. There can be absolutely no ques-
tion of anything like sublimation of the sex impulse or idealization
of the women. In these erotic dreams, which we have just noted, in
which the inner man comes to expression, there is as little of the
ideal or refined elements of the higher stages of love as in the con-
versations carried on in the trenches, or in the soldiers' songs and
jokes which revolved entirely upon the theme of sex. In dreams, as
in the waking state, the oppressive sex starvation of the soldiers
showed itself in all the multifarious expressions that are so well
known. We shall confine ourselves to quoting just one illustration
from the war novel by Johannsen:

"A sleeping soldier whispers in his dream the name of some
woman. A student lying nearby shuts his eyes and soon is asleep.
The lousy, filthy blanket turns into a girl's dress and the curve of
the steel helmet on which his hand rests is transformed into a small
girl's breast. A sweet warmth runs through his veins. He dreams
of his sweetheart and, after her picture becomes somewhat pale, he
dreams of women in general."

The sexual hunger at the front and in the encampments of the
prisoners-of-war was everywhere strongly apparent. Many a man
thus got his first notion of the sex hunger that rages in prisons. . . .

Nor were there lacking on the front other well-known conse-
quences of sexual abstinence. Thus many soldiers had themselves
tattooed when there was an opportunity. There are many places in
literature, especially in the works of Italian psychiatrists, where the
erotic origin of this phenomenon is explained. We know that it is
to be attributed to sex hunger; most tattoos applied during the

SENSUALITY IN THE TRENCHES

World War had an outspoken erotic character. This phenomenon
was met with most frequently in sailors who naturally had more
opportunity for carrying out this practice than soldiers in the
trenches. In Freud's terminology, we are dealing with men who
have been away from women for a long time and without the op-
portunity for sexual satisaction, and who therefore, have turned
back their libido fixation upon themselves. During the World War
the sailors generally had themselves tattooed in the very first weeks
of service, a fact which has been frequently observed among pris-
oners. It is, of course, impossible to say what percentage, but among
the English sailors it is estimated that twenty per cent of the men
in service were tattooed, an estimate which also applies to the
German navy because here the national differences are submerged
by the fact that the manner of life is exactly the same. Furthermore,
our estimate of the number of soldiers who had their bodies
stamped with these erotic designs is rendered more difficult as many
soldiers who participated in the war had had themselves tattooed
previously or had behind them a prison record of longer or shorter
duration. It will be remembered that, according to fairly reliable
statistics, between fifty and sixty per cent of prisoners have them-
selves tattooed. In the war diary of the Italian psychiatrist, Bian-
chini, we read the following incident:

"The chaplain had brought to the physician two soldiers who
had been very gravely wounded. One was an Austrian and bore
upon his breast, which had been torn by a bomb, and upon his
arms and back a number of tattoos which represented sexual sym-
bols. Bianchini was very much interested in ascertaining where
this soldier had gotten tattooed for every nation has been accusing
every other nation of releasing their desperate criminals, including
murderers, from prison and using them for military service. Bian-
chini, therefore, was interested to know whether this gravely
wounded man had also been a prisoner. He asked him where he
had gotten the tattoo but the poor felfow didn't answer. The
physician cleaned his wounds, bandaged him, alleviated the physi-
cal pains of the dying man and then consoled him in his mother
tongue. Now for the first time the man's tongue loosened and he
asked the physician if he were going to die. T will tell you the
truth,' Bianchini said, 'provided you will inform me where you got
those tattoos. Was it in prison?' The dying man closed his eyes in
shame and mumbled a scarcely audible 'Yes.' "

One of the most frequent consequences of sexual starvation dur-

84 THE SEXUAL HISTORY OF THE WORLD WAR

ing the war is the retreat to infantile forms of satisfying the libido.
We have already shown that among these masturbation occupied
the first place but, in general, we might say that the life in the
trenches was calculated in itself to favor the recrudescence of in-
fantilism. Stekel has given the following explanation of this phe-
nomena which, be it remembered, also serves to explain why so
many soldiers who returned from the war have become unfit for
work and find no pleasure at all in it.

"I have frequently emphasized that all infantilists are lazy. They
revolt at work because it disturbs their fantasy life and dreams.
The retreat from work and the avoidance of it is a dangerous social
phenomenon. Owing to the war it has become a psychic epidemic
which has infected whole nations. The reasons are quite obvious.
In the trenches and in the playfulness of the war stations during
periods of idleness and enforced inactivity, there were numerous,
totally empty hours in which the soldier was driven back to his
infantile fantasies in order to kill time and to escape from the pain-
ful present into a pleasurable dream world. The war drove numer-
ous men and women into the comforting arms of infantilism.
Numerous marriages were destroyed by it and innumerable men
lost all joy in work and in reality. It will take decades until these
noxious consequences will be remedied."

Among the phenomena under the general rubric of erotic mani-
festations in the trenches, we desire to mention anal eroticism
among soldiers. As is well known, the purely animal and physical
needs stood at the center of the soldiers' interest for, placed in the
primitive conditions at the front, they lost practically all the
achievements of civilization and were sexually unsatisfied.

In the war novel by Remarque we can see how much of the
soldiers' attention was directed to defecation— its technique and
pleasures. The new recruits used the large mass latrine but those
who had been in the service for a while had little boxes of their
own. These boxes were equipped with comfortable seats, and
handles whereby they could be transposed. Remarque describes
for us how soldiers sat down on their seats for a good long session,
with no intention whatever of getting up before two hours had
elapsed. When they first came to the garrison as rookies they suf-
fered considerable embarrassment at having to use the communal
latrine. There was no door and twenty men sat in line next to each
other as in a train, for the soldier had continually to be under
supervision. But very soon they overcame this modesty. After a

SENSUALITY IN THE TRENCHES

while everything became indifferent to them. At the front this
bodily function actually became a pleasure and men were unable
to understand why they had formerly been squeamish about a
matter which was as natural as eating and drinking.

To the soldier his stomach and digestion are much more familiar
things than they are to other people. Three-quarters of his vo-
cabulary is derived from this realm and the expressions of his
highest joy as well as of his deepest sorrow derive their picturesque
imagery from this. It is impossible to express oneself as succinctly
and clearly in any other way. The families and teachers of the
soldiers may be surprised at this when the latter return home, but
at the front it is the universal language. For soldiers these processes
once again achieved the character of complete innocence or nat-
uralness as a result of the compulsory publicness. They became so
obvious that their pleasurable performance was regarded with great
satisfaction. It is significant that the word that came to be applied
to gossip of all kinds is latrine parole for the privies were the
places for conversation for the soldiers much as a restaurant table
is to others.

It is impossible to overlook the libidinous coloring in Remarque's
depiction of these matters. But the connection between defecation
and sex is represented much more clearly in the war novel, Schipper
at the Front. In this book of Beradt's we see how every soldier was
as happy as a schoolboy when the body demanded its needs. Al-
though it was only a large bird cage in which the happily busy
one could hang for a little while, this little stay between heaven
and earth was so pleasant for the idler that he gladly seized this
opportunity to recuperate from his labors, no matter what the
weather — rain, snow or storm. Soon the shyness that had been
present in the beginning disappeared completely and one did not
scruple at all to undress before strangers. In this place of leisurely
activity arose those stories which were best designated as latrine
stories, a term befitting them as well because of their nature as of
their place of origin. It was remarkable how childish the reactions
of the men were in respect to the satisfaction of this excremental
function. The latter was not regarded as anything repulsive, or as
something to be merely tolerated, but as an object for jest. The
German soldiers were not nearly as much concerned with their
front sides as with their rear. As people with a comparatively
moderate sensuality they were much more concerned with the dis-
cussion of the influence of eating and drinking than of erotic pleas-

86 THE SEXUAL HISTORY OF THE WORLD WAR

ures, a manner of reaction entirely different from that common
to other nations where, contrariwise, it was the pleasures of sex
that occupied the first rank. Withal, this delight of the Germans
in the movements of their bowels was difficult to reconcile with the
cleanliness they are noted for. And with regard to external cleanli-
ness, they did live up to their reputation; but while they main-
tained their external standards they filled their mouths with filth.
This contradiction is to be explained by the fact that the outer man
has not become accustomed to the progress of the inner man and
retains his old pleasure in acts or processes which the external form
of life has already transcended. Knowledge and habit simply had
not kept pace. Some people have attributed this delight in coprol-
ogy to another circumstance. It can be regarded as a self-limitation
—a sort of regression to escape a greater danger— the consequences
of traffic with women who were very difficult of access here; and
since there had to be something to occupy the imagination of the
men during the fearsome weeks, the vegetative domain of life was
exploited. However, Beradt disagrees with this hypothesis inas-
much as he had found that the joy in the excremental pleasures
exceeded that taken in the erotic domain. There were soldiers who
loved the one and didn't hate the other. Once he had to dine with
four other officers and was fairly submerged under a volley of the
nastiest sort of excremental jokes combined with a steady stream of
bawdy ones. It was virtually impossible for a person of any sensi-
tivity at all to swallow a mouthful under such conditions. He
pounded on the table madly and called for a bit of decency but
this only served to increase the current of filth, and he was finally
forced to leave the table and finish his supper alone. However, in
the ensuing days at lunch, at least, a certain amount of considera-
tion was extended to those whose stomachs were somewhat squeam-
ish. But now Beradt was annoyed by another pest. It happened
that at night he had to sleep near a worker for whom every move-
ment and word contained a hint or suggestion that was scatologic
or pornographic. Men are quickly infected by this type as education
and self-control are only a thin veil concealing but lightly the
primitive impulse; and so this soldier's comrades, not to be out-
done, went beyond him in foulness. To sustain his reputation he
made additional and incessant efforts to cover everything with stool.
Life was unbearable and Beradt saw himself compelled to thrash
the chap and only after the flogging was there a return to a some-
what higher level of decency.

SENSUALITY IN THE TRENCHES

Now Beradt's account is correct and quite in line with Tiejen-
psychologie (the name suggested by Bleuler for psychoanalysis).
He points here to the double root of anal eroticism among soldiers.
On the one hand it is a regression to infantile anal acts and activi-
ties to the child's libidinous play with excrement, and on the other
side it is a substitute for sexual intercourse. For this reason anal
eroticism must not be omitted in any discussion of the sexual hun-
ger of soldiers even if its importance seems to have been overlooked
by the Fachwissenschajt. Another thing that we may regard as a
substitute activity is the social game played with flatus so popular
among soldiers and officers as well.

It has been reported that on and off pseudo-homosexual inter-
course, or homoerotic love between men who heretofore had been
of normal sexuality, also played a role as a substitute form of sex
satisfaction. We shall return to this matter in the chapter on homo-
sexuality during the war. In the case of another perversion —
sodomy or bestiality, the connection with sex hunger created by
war conditions is much clearer. This sort of sexual activity is even
in normal times to be attributed to insufficient opportunity for the
exercise of coitus, since a pathological sexual impulse which is
directed only towards animals is rather rare (Forel). Of course in
some few cases we must assume another factor in order to under-
stand this type of aberration — satiety with the normal response and
a desire for novelty and change. In regard to sodomy, we have the
testimony of one of the leading military physicians of the Austro-
Hungarian army that on the Italian front at least (he was stationed
near Doberdo) such cases could be observed very frequently. The
usual offenders in this respect were Hungarian hussars who used
for sexual purposes the mares entrusted to their care. Even officers
occasionally indulged this perversion and that is why men who
were caught at this act were never brought before a military court
but were flogged right then and there. The authority referred to
above, estimates that on a conservative judgment at least ten per
cent of the men in his division participated in such perverted sex
activities. Such an enormous spread of sodomy and all experiences
that have been gathered on this subject (Forel has observed this
condition only among idiots and morons who, despised and mocked
by every girl, retire to the quiet of the stable to seek and find
consolation with a cow) put it beyond question that we are dealing
here with one of the sequela? of abstention from normal sex activ-
ity enforced by the conditions of war.

88 THE SEXUAL HISTORY OF THE WORLD WAR

Of course in all previous wars and indeed in peace times there is
clearly discernible a certain comradeship between the soldier and
his steed. A good expression of the affection felt by a cavalryman
for his horse is to be read in Edward Kachmann's novel called
Four Years — Front Reports of a Cavalryman. In many cases, there-
fore, it is difficult to say whether the more intimate relationship
with the animal that we are here discussing is to be regarded as
zoophily, or animal fetishism, or as the adoption of certain reac-
tions as substitutes for normal sex intercourse. This is true of the
case reported by Magnus Hirschfeld, one of the few instances of
sodomy observed and reported during the war. During the war he
had to give an opinion on a Bavarian corporal who had cohabited
with a sow. This man's colleague had observed on numerous oc-
casions he had slipped into the swine pens and locked himself in.
The soldiers, suspicious of their comrade, bored little holes through
the door and, when they next saw him slink into the barn, they
watched him through the little openings and saw, to their amaze-
ment, that the corporal had complete coitus with the sow. On the
information supplied by them he was arrested. It is most interesting
to note what his defense was: the light colored skin of the swine
had always reminded him of his fair-skinned wife whom he loved
dearly (she had presented him with seven splendid children) but
from whom he had been separated for two years; it was in order
to remain faithful to her that he had expended his lust upon the
sow. Despite his honest defense, which proceeded from a consider-
able degree of mental weakness, his admirable war record and
numerous distinctions, the man was sentenced to a rather severe
punishment. The naive fashion in which the accused defended his
derilection is frequently found in such cases, and is typical of the
low mentality of the malefactors.

There was much discussion among physicians about the possible
or probable consequences of enforced continence. This was espe-
cially true in Germany where in 191 5 the "Society for the Com-
bating of Venereal Diseases" sent a questionnaire on this subject to
all physicians serving in the field. There were some twenty-seven
questions referring to the results of abstinence, the frequency of
pollutions and masturbation, neurasthenic phenomena, homosexual
activities, etc. The opinion was generally current that for such an
investigation the war offered a magnificent opportunity inasmuch
as hundreds of thousands of men had to live away from their wives;
yet quite a number of the medical men disapproved of this question-

SENSUALITY IN THE TRENCHES

naire very strongly. Thus Dr. Schaffer wrote that it was dangerous
to the common cause and insulting, especially in its influence upon
the wives who had remained at home. In addition he thought that a
number of the questions were out and out suggestive. In the course
of the conversations, Felix Theilhaber expressed the opinion that
the whole discussion seemed to be a waste of time for the facts had
been well known even before — that men at the front do not find it
hard to overcome sexual abstinence just as sportsmen can easily
bear the lack of sex intercourse. The real fighters, especially in the
East, he thought, who were going through such a strong physical
strain were definitely in a position to overcome any evil effect
resulting from their enforced continence, seeing that they were
diverted from this by strong psychic effects, that their living con-
ditions were extremely simple and, especially, that there was com-
pletely lacking any object that could tempt them; the old desires
would immediately return, of course, when these men left the
firing line.

This opinion was true but only in the light of the knowledge
available at that time — which, as we have indicated, was very
scanty. All the evil effects of sex hunger first became manifest
when the soldiers had been at their positions for a long time, where
the danger to life, although still considerable, was none the less
much decreased, and to the soldier whom habit had dulled must
have appeared almost negligible. To be sure, when the battle was
raging for a long time and life was in imminent danger, the worry
about the mere preservation of life was so great as to annihilate all
other impulses. In these cases the lack of sexual intercourse had
consequences which were quite different but none the less noxious.
We are referring here to the extinction of sexuality — a condition
which was observed in all armies and complained of by many
soldiers. This extinction of sexuality constituted a lasting impair-
ment of health. The medical protagonists of the theory that absti-
nence was innocuous and who, at the beginning pointed to the
consequences with triumph, soon had to reveal the facts.

This fact cannot be denied. All that is possible is a difference of
interpretation; and if we regard the impotence which resulted
from continence as an undesirable and sad consequence, one can
certainly not render a verdict in favor of abstinence. Early in 1916,
H. Fehlinger stated clearly that as far as his experiences went with
men who were engaged in military service, their sexuality had been
completely swamped. Among the men who were facing the enemy's

9o THE SEXUAL HISTORY OF THE WORLD WAR

fire directly, sexuality was almost completely obliterated. Fehlinger
even asserted that not even in conversation did sex appear to be a
factor. Young and old reacted alike in this regard. Only one ex-
pression could be heard more or less frequently — that the men
themselves noticed and complained about the lack of sex needs.

We have every reason to assume that the abstinence enforced by
the war resulted in all forms of sexual neurosis. This is particularly
true of the most important of these neuroses, ejaculatio prcecox.
The war, with all the hardships and dislocations it imposed upon
sex life, seems to have increased tremendously the number of these
cases. Magnus Hirschfeld has reported that scarcely a week passed
in which female patients did not come to the "Institut fur Sexual-
wissenschaft" (an institution with which he was intimately con-
nected) with the complaint that their husbands, who had formerly
been healthy, had returned from the war suffering from this
complaint.

Even Vorberg, who otherwise was a protagonist of abstinence,
reported that in the front line trenches, where death reaped an
hourly harvest, sexual desire became extinguished, as no one thought
of woman as something to satisfy sex lust. There's no denying that
for men not in the firing line who were able to get under the
influence of alcohol and were exposed to the allurements of venal
women, the old Adam would rise again.

Lissmann has stated, in the brochure we have already referred
to, that the impotence caused by abstinence during the war lasted
for a considerable period after the war. To quote his own words:
"Even in the field not a few officers and soldiers with thoroughly
normal nervous systems told me that at the beginning of their
furloughs their erections were either completely absent or extremely
imperfect. It is true that in the second week of the furlough these
abnormal phenomena receded considerably in most cases; but even
now I frequently have occasion to see among the soldiers all phases
of impotence, from weakness of erections to that of complete
absence of tumescence. Not infrequently there is also to be noticed
a great uncertainty with regard to potency. By chance, these
observations that I had made in that field received confirmation
by the police physician resident in a little town behind our lines.
I requested him to make inquiries of the prostitutes plying their
trade in that town, concerning the potency of their clients. The
replies showed that the men who had just come in from the front
lacked the customary sexual power and very frequently showed in-

SENSUALITY IN THE TRENCHES

complete or imperfect erections. During the war it was possible to
attribute this functional weakness as psychic impotence due to the
time limit set for coitus during the furlough or to the dishabituation
of the senses from chemical eroticization. But now, after the war,
when the sexes are already reunited, the causal relation is lacking.
F. Pick has also established the perdurance of high grade disturb-
ances of the sexual function among former soldiers. In more than
half of the cases observed by him, libido, erection and ejaculation
were completely lacking."

On the other side of the picture there is to be noted an opposite,
but equally morbid consequence: the most erotomaniacal increase
of the sexual impulse as soon as there was any opportunity to
gratify it. A large number of the venereal diseases gotten in the
field-brothels were due to this oppressive and totally irrational sex
hunger.

Especially during the first or mobile part of the war, abstinence
was more frequently accompanied by this consequence than the
later or stationary portion by the de-eroticizing influence. On this
question Major Franz Carl Endres has said the following:

"Fresh and merry warfare is nothing but propaganda. Yes, it is
possible to be merry during the war- — in the pauses between battles
— even merrier than one normally is. This results from the fact that
the nerves are taut and man's natural desire for life cries out for
fulfillment. One wishes to be merry at least once more, for to-
morrow, likely as not, one will be dead. That is why the eroticism
of the undisciplined soldiers is so atrociously wild. In war times
the great fatigue caused by the maneuvers is not enough to lull
to sleep the erotic desires of the men but seems rather to excite
them. When there is added the feeling of having escaped from a
great danger (or being about to be exposed to one) there are
operative not only the physical disposition, but also an increased
sexual drive, and psychic moments of excitation which in men, who
have anything of the perverse in their constitution, leads to
erotomania and perversion of the sex impulse."

The war ideology believed that it was possible to dispose of this
whole complex question with cheap jokes concerning the immeasur-
ably increased sexual potency of the soldier (generalized quite
without foundation) home on furlough. But little good came of that.
Sex hunger was and remained throughout the war a serious and
even tragic problem, insoluble like all the others which war visited
upon man.

Chapter 5

VENEREAL DISEASES

Devastating Effects of Venereal Diseases— Impediment to Successful War-
fare—Pre-War Statistics— German Society for Prevention of Venereal
Diseases— Mobile vs. Stationary Army— Preventive Measures of Each Na-
tion—Surprise Examinations— New Prophylactic Methods Devised During
War "Tail Parades"— Officers Exempt from Examination — Sanitary Con-
trol—Punishment for Concealment of Disease— Syphilitic Soldiers Returned
to Trenches by Patriotic Physicians— The Etape, the Real Breeding
Ground— Dissolution of Brothels by Military Police— Demand for Women
Greater than Supply— Disease Spreads to Rural Population— Problems of
Occasional Prostitution— Physical Examinations Before Furloughs— Ex-
change of Germs Between Hinterland and Front— Venereal Diseases in
Literature— Disease Rampant Throughout Post-War World

EVERY one of the warring nations was clearly aware of the
dangers of venereal diseases to the strength and fighting power of
their troops. The statistics of past wars had established beyond any
doubt the devastating effect of this plague. Yet of all the warring
nations Germany was the only one to undertake anything resem-
bling a systematic solution of the problem and to apply what had
been learnt from the experiences of past wars, especially the
Franco-German War (1870-1871). Naturally such action was un-
dertaken primarily in the interests of successful warfare and only
incidentally because of humanitarian considerations of public
health, etc.

England, whose army and navy had always shown a record
number of venereal diseases, a fact strangely overlooked or neglected
by its puritanical morality, just saw a further spread of venereal
diseases; and the French standpoint was, from the outset, rather
anarchistic. Here too, syphilis increased in a degree never seen
before, as we shall discover when we compare the figures for the
different countries. With regard to the dissemination of venereal
diseases in the Austrian army, we might say that Victor Adler's
opinion was justified when he asserted that Austria's form of govern-
ment was an absolutism mitigated by slovenliness. Only in the
German army was there any organized fight against venereal
diseases. Let us glance for a moment at some figures compiled
by Dr. Blaschko relative to the distribution of these diseases in
various armies before the war. The figures date from 1895 but
until the outbreak of the World War they remained true relative to
each other (although the absolute numbers declined).

VENEREAL DISEASES

Land

Percentage of sufferers
from venereal diseases
per iooo population

Germany
France
Austria
Italy

84.9
173-8

25-5
41.9
61.0

England

In a report of the German Society for the Prevention of Venereal
Diseases, Dr. Wolff has written that from 1881 to 1900 there was a
continuous decline of venereal diseases in the German army as well
as in the armies of other European states, especially England. Only
Austria, Italy and Spain showed no decline; and Russia after the
middle nineties even showed a moderate increase.

History teaches that the dangers of infections are very much
less when the army is in motion than when the troops entrench into
a long-term position. In the war of 1870 a certain South German
army corps, investigated by Professor Neisser, had 3.3 per cent of
venereal diseases. In October of that year the number had risen to
10.2 per cent; and, in 1871, when the troops had been encamped in
French quarters for some five months the number had climbed to
77.7 per cent. In the Greco-Turkish war the total casualties mounted
to 4000 men; but during the peace negotiations which stretched
over months, the Turk army, which had not yet been demobilized,
lost 50,000 men from infectious diseases.

When, after the first great battles of 1914, the war changed
more or less into a war of occupation, there was ample reason to
fear a repetition of this rapid spread of venereal infection in large
portions of the German army. Some notion of the dangers facing
the German hosts, who were occupying French territory, may be
gleaned from the fact that in 1870 French journals (Charivari for
example) had plainly called on all the French whores to perform
what it considered a task of the highest patriotism — to infect with
venereal disease whole masses of the German invaders. It was con-
stantly feared that this method would again be used and it was ever
being fed by rumors from the occupied territories of France or
Belgium. A. R. Meyer who, in his famous Five Mysteries, used the
bomb attack on the hospital in Lousberg, has Belgian whores re-
leased from custody say, "Let us fall upon the German soldiers.

94 THE SEXUAL HISTORY OF THE WORLD WAR

We are monsters. Let us bear the brand through every street and
beat the enemy from our fatherland!"

The precautionary measures taken by the German military leaders
against the spread of venereal diseases during the war have been
summarized by Vorberg as follows:

1. Instruction of the men concerning the dangers of extramarital
intercourse.

2. Warning against the use of spirituous drinks as artificial excit-
ants of sex desire.

3. Frequent, surprise examinations.

4. Punishment of concealed disease.

5. Examination of all women resident in occupied areas who are
suspected of prostitution.

6. Immediate determination of the source of infection for the
safeguarding of the healthy.

7. No furlough without medical examination.

8. Personal precautionary measures.

a. Personal cleanliness to prevent inflammation of the prepuce
and penis which facilitates the reception of syphilitic toxin.

b. Lubrication of the member before coitus (condoms were
sometimes advised).

c. After coitus micturition and disinfection with pipette of two
or three drops of 20 per cent protargol for the prevention
of gonorrhea. Rubbing the gland and prepuce with cotton
dipped in bichloride 1:1000.

9. Medical treatment of venereal diseases.

In every army save the English, the men received instruction in
these matters. In Germany the Society for the Prevention of Vene-
real Diseases came to the aid of the military authorities in this world
for enlightenment and distributed to all the soldiers who left for
the battlefield innumerable copies of the following circular: "Every
soldier is under the sacred obligation of keeping himself well for
the sake of his fatherland, especially in war times when the greatest
demands are made upon his capacities. The health of soldiers is
undermined most by venereal diseases— syphilis and gonorrhea.
These ailments not only cause great pain, but make the man weak
and ailing, unable to fight or march, not to speak of all the grave
results which may follow, for often the whole lifetime. These
diseases are gotten from frivolous girls and women who are nearly
all sick as a result of their loose living and who then transmit these

VENEREAL DISEASES

diseases to the men with whom they have intercourse. Especially
during war time the soldiers must keep away from these girls at
home as well as in the land of the enemy. He should be particularly
careful not to drink spirituous liquors (whiskey, beer, wine) lest, in
his intoxication, he be seduced by these women. In addition to
keeping the rest of his body clean he must also keep his sex organs
very clean."

Professor Flesch made similar demands at a meeting of military
physicians at Lille. He counselled, among other things, instruction
of the men through repeated distribution of proper circulars, fre-
quent examinations without previous warning, the greatest possible
limitation of alcohol and its supplanting by gratuitous distribution
of tea and coffee, avoidance of single quarters in the cities with a
tendency to garrisoning the men instead, punishment of every one
found to have a venereal disease, and impunity for those men who
have reported for disinfectant treatment no more than six hours
after the coitus.

The best effects were exercised by those circulars which drew
the greatest attention of the soldiers by their humorous form. One
exceedingly droll poster of this sort is extant, bearing the signature
of the staff physician, but it does not bear quoting.

There is considerable difference of opinion concerning the pro-
phylactic effect of these measures. Thus Dr. Veress was of the
opinion that the prophylactic measures devised during peace times,
and to some extent in war times (in the hinterland), were, to a
large extent, impracticable for a great army of millions standing in
the field.

Certain new prophylactic methods were devised during the war.
Thus the Austrian army was provided with a prophylactic kit con-
sisting of an antiseptic soap, a silver preparation and a little styptic
pencil for the urethra. It was reported that, thanks to this inven-
tion, the number of venereal patients in one army division of 37,000
men, fell 38 per cent between January and May, 1916.

During the same year the Vienna medical journals reported that
informative tables were issued to the hygienists who gave instruc-
tion in prophylaxis. What such an examination entailed can be
gathered from a communication sent us by a Hungarian soldier of
which only a portion is fit to be quoted: "After the lieutenant had
barked out a number of military orders in quick tempo he ap-
proached the difficult task which obviously he didn't relish very
much. He said: 'You're really not supposed to ... at all, but if you

g 6 THE SEXUAL HISTORY OF THE WORLD WAR

are such swine and must . . . then at least do it with your mothers
so that the gonorrhea will remain at home in the family.' " (It
should be remarked that incest with one's mother is a very wide-
spread Hungarian idiom, a sort of regular forceful expression of the
Hungarian popular tongue.)

Not a whit more popular than this "instruction" was what, in
the language of the garrison, bore the name "tail parade." In every
army examinations to detect the presence of venereal diseases were
carried out two or three times weekly, in spite of the fact that V.
Tdply, one of the chief physicians, had stated that periodic mass
examinations were "thoroughly irrelevant" during the war. We
shall not undertake to decide whether these measures were justifi-
able or groundless. But it cannot be denied that this "tail parade"
was among the vilest expressions of the military spirit, and one
constituting the deepest insult to the finer soul-spirit; and the forms
under which it took place made it appear even more an institution
with noxious and brutalizing effects.

In Wilhelm Michael's novel Injanterist Perhobspler we read tie
following :

("After drill came the tail-parade.)

" T haven't even a bit of juice for myself — so how can there be
anything left for a whore,' etc.

"The physician became foul when somebody didn't have his
thing quite ready as he passed by. He growled out, 'Prepuce back,
quick ! '

"I was oppressed by the whole procedure for I would have re-
ported to the doctor if anything had gone wrong. At that inspec-
tion, as at every other I had ever seen, not one sick man was found.
To be sure, there were many sick men but they had all reported in
time. In our own company during the whole time I was there, only
one man had gotten diseased, but he had reported the matter of his
own accord directly he had noticed it!"

Still no one can deny that these practices had some educational
value. Let us quote here verbatim from the diary of one young
soldier:

"October, 191 5— Health inspection. Among some soldiers the
sanitary corporal found what they called smegma under the pre-
puce. Whereupon he called out angrily, 'You old sows, can't you
remove the cheese?' I noticed that I was the same way but I was
able to wipe the stuff away with my shirt before I was reached.
But it hurt. I had never had sexual intercourse and no one had ever

VENEREAL DISEASES

told me that physical cleanliness would have to extend even under
the foreskin that had remained untouched until now — which is
very likely the origin of the expression to be untouched."

Naturally enough in these examinations the distinctions of rank
were observed. Although officers had by no means a smaller per-
centage of venereal diseases (indeed at the front stations they
contributed a greater contingent) they were exempt from examina-
tions. The consequences of this exemption can be gathered from
an official order of one corps issued in 191 7 in which, as a result of
the spread of venereal disease among the officers, the extension of
examination to the younger officers was enjoined. Despite such
injunctions nothing very much was accomplished in the matter of
the sanitary control of the officers.

If such a comparatively easy task as supervising officers could
not be accomplished, it is no wonder then that no one paid any
attention to the plan of keeping syphilitic soldiers out of the army,
a device which would have prevented the extragenital dissemina-
tion of syphilis. According to the regulations issued in 19 16 relative
to eligibility for military service, luetics were fit for military service
if they had no other physical defect and if there was a possibility of
restoring them to some degree of health in a short time. The only
precautionary measures adopted were that luetics with infectious
phenomena near or in the mouth were not transported in trains.
They were sent to the nearest military hospital where the infectious
mouth conditions were treated and cured.

During the war there was much discussion whether penalties
should be attached to non-use of precautionary measures, and more
particularly, whether the contraction of venereal disease in itself
constituted an offense or just the concealment of the disease once
it had been contracted.

In connection with this point, Dr. B. Beron, military physician
to the Bulgarian army in Macedonia, has reported the following:
"At the very first moment the regulation was issued that every
soldier who had contracted a venereal disease should be 'corre-
spondingly' punished. But it had defects which paralyzed its bene-
ficial effects, namely, the soldier endeavored to conceal his disease,
thus exposing himself to the most dangerous complications of the
dread disease, and his comrades to contagion; and secondly, the
soldier would keep secret where he had become infected and so
rob us of any possibility of controlling the prostitute who was the
source of the infection and taking measures to cure her. Hence it

98 the sexual history of the world war

was decided to mete out punishment (several days' arrest) only
when the soldier had concealed the disease."

In the German army also the more humane solution was chosen
for reasons of economy and only the concealment of the disease
was punished. But by this measure very little was accomplished,
for no soldier felt any qualms at having contracted the disease. Not
only did the soldiers gladly report when they contracted any
venereal disease (there being no penalty for that), but there was
another consequence of perhaps greater moment. Since all penalties
were lacking, numerous soldiers neglected to take the necessary
precautions against infection as the course of treatment took some
time and during this cure-period at least the man was saved from
the danger of death. There seemed to be no escape from this
dilemma. With freedom from penalties for having contracted the
disease the temptation to wanton infection was too great, especially
in view of the negligible importance attributed to gonorrhea. On
the other hand, strict punishments led to wholesale concealment. In
this fashion it was possible in the Austrian army, where lax and
draconian treatment would alternate rhapsodically, that luetic sol-
diers should be on the march and carry out all the other fatiguing
duties of the soldier's life, suffering the most agonizing pain all
the time. It was as though they were eager to disprove the assertion
of Blaschko that, with soldiers suffering from gonorrhea, it was
impossible to march or to fight victorious battles.

In the Serbian army affliction with a venereal disease was a pun-
ishable offense. In the American forces, contraction of lues was
punished by deprivation of pay and limitation of freedom until the
malady had been cured. Anyone who had contracted these diseases
and failed to seek medical attention was hauled before a military
court and, in case he had infected others, was sentenced to prison.

The matter of treatment aroused considerable difference of opinion
partly among medical men and partly among military authorities.
The method of treatment had to be decided if the combating of
venereal diseases by the military and medical authorities was to be
successful. There were groups who were of the opinion that venereal
disease was a trick to get out of service in the field and these
people always inclined to treat these cases as ambulatory ones and
carry out the course of therapy in the field. Thus in December,
1914, Dr. Oppenheimer expressed the opinion that even patients
with acute gonorrhea should be kept at the front and treated there.
Dr. Karl Ziegler of Wurzburg held that it was possible under certain

VENEREAL DISEASES

conditions to treat cases of latent syphilis in the field, but that
conditions at the front made it extremely difficult to treat soft
chancre and gonorrhea.

Fortunately this opinion was rejected by the majority of phy-
sicians. At the beginning they even went to the opposite extreme
and sent home from the Belgian front any soldier who had con-
tracted a venereal disease — this in accordance with a hygienic pre-
scription set forth by Toply in 1890 that only healthy individuals
be permitted to remain within the sphere of operations, all others
being sent home to hospitals. But later on, as the number of such
patients increased, this policy was altered and treatment was
accorded these people in the hospitals that had been established in
the occupied territory.

Dr. Bettman, therefore, came to the conclusion which every
dermatologist who had ever been active in the field would agree
with: that treatment in the field was impossible and hospitalization
was necessary lest the malady become aggravated; isolation of these
patients in special hospitals was indicated lest they spread their
infection. In certain cases it would, of course, be possible to release
some of these patients from the hospital and use them for certain
tasks, continuing the treatment ambulatorily.

In the English and French armies the question of ambulatory
treatment was apparently never discussed, yet here also conceal-
ments were quite frequent in many cases as a result of ignorance.

Despite the generally reasonable attitude of physicians to the
question of therapy, there was much that was unsatisfactory in this
regard in the German army. Many physicians were dominated in
this connection by the desire to restore the diseased soldiers to
military service as soon as possible. In this way many cases were
released from the hospital before their cure was complete. Early in
1915 Dr. Carl Stern pointed out that there had been a tremendous
growth in the number of cases of syphilis of extragenital infection.
It was his belief that the great increase in labial chancres could not
be explained solely by the desire of young girls for loving and
kissing war-heroes, but that it was rather due to an underestimation
of the power and durability of the disease once contracted, and a
too enthusiastic dependence on the permanent effect of heavy
doses of salvarsan. From these facts Dr. Stern concluded that it
would be doing the soldiers a good turn to subject them to a
longer cure even during the war. This premature discharge of

ioo THE SEXUAL HISTORY OF THE WORLD WAR

venereal patients was but one of the crimes committed by those
super-patriots who happened to wear surgeon's uniforms.

The real source and breeding ground of venereal diseases was
naturally the front station (Etape) with its ramified prostitution
both in brothels and privately. Here the struggle against the in-
fection of the army had to coincide with police regulations against
those already infected who were fairly numerous on both the
Western and Eastern fronts. In a little war brochure entitled A
Word to the Women a very shrewd woman, Lydia Ruchland, has
said:

"That there is no lack of temptations in the land of the enemy,
everyone can see at once. And it isn't merely stark need that drives
women to offer themselves. We must reckon, among the motives
which impel the enemy women to give themselves, such factors as
ardent temperament, the desire for variety, the inclination to give
preference to a stranger. Hence the young soldier who, when he is
healthy and normal, thinks of women as being always ready, got
into a certain conflict. The war transvalued many things and only
rarely were these changes advantageous. Concepts that once were
fixed and certain, now became confused and loose as, for example,
morals. Many a person got into the habit of taking whatever things
he might need. Why should man as a sexual creature do otherwise?
And it wasn't only the man that took the woman. I know of cases
where very ardent Frenchwomen simply took our good humored
German soldiers when the latter did not come of their own accord.
Of course the military authorities were very careful and they didn't
miss any woman who had given herself to any soldier; and whoever
was sick or suspicious was held."

In quite a different style Wandt has reported concerning the
conditions at the Flemish sector— but the upshot is the same as the
previous account. "Venereal infection (called by the picturesque
name of Kopjschuss, or a shot in the head) belonged to the minor
accidents of war which happened a hundred times a day in our
station. If this mishap befell an officer it seldom came to the ears of
the curious world because the possession of epaulettes relieved one
from the necessity of participating in the hydrant and hose parade
which lasted four weeks. Still occasionally, the matter would get
known through an accident or indiscretion. At such times the
officer in question, to maintain the dignity of officialdom, would
immediately be relieved of his duty and sent home where he would

VENEREAL DISEASES

101

generally spout interminably concerning the self-sacrificing-heroism
with which he had given his health for his beloved fatherland.

"But if a common fellow got into hot water, and sustained the
sort of head shot which would cause him to abstain from that
combat which constitutes the joy of life, he would, of course, have
no occasion to fear that the officer's lot would be his, and that his
misfortune would be cloaked over with Christian love. When the
sanitary sergeant in charge of these matters observed the ineluct-
able impost of joy visited upon the little voyager into the realms of
venery, he immediately reported the matter and the poor sinner
would forthwith have to leave for the place devoted to such
matters.

"There he was met by the irascible corporal or guardian with
appropriate profanity and interrogated until he divulged the name
and address of the philanthropic huckstress from whom he had
bought this wonderful memento of the war. If he was able to give
the name of the woman, or at least the address of the temple of
love and her description, he was able to escape the brief prison
sentence (three to seven days) which his chief would otherwise
impose upon him. Every chap who fell under suspicion certainly
didn't want to have the added misfortune of lying in a dark hole
for three to seven days and partaking of the sumptuous fare of
bread and water."

Very frequently the minutes taken at these meetings were ludi-
crous in their intense endeavor to make plausible to those higher up
that the accused knew neither the name nor address of his fallen
angel who had appeared to him during the night but, naturally, not
in a dream. Every third girl in Flanders is called Marie and there
are innumerable records of such hearings in which only this prse-
nomen serves to distinguish the benevolent lady in question.

Such cases were exceedingly frequent. During the war the French
had a popular ballad called La saucisse de Strasbourg (the little
sausage of Strasbourg) which took as its theme this sort of occur-
rence. It relates how a German soldier who had quaffed too deeply
of the joys of love became infected and had to suffer the removal
of his little sausage, in which mournful state he returned home after
the war and had to confess to his shocked and sorrowful wife the
loss of that which had united them.

The other armies also believed that they could control the
spread of venereal diseases by ascertaining where the infections had
been gotten and by controlling or removing these sources. Thus

102 THE SEXUAL HISTORY OF THE WORLD WAR

Dr. B. Beron of Sofia has informed us that on the Macedonian front
strict inquiries were made among the soldiers as to whether they
had become infected before or after mobilization; and if the latter,
just where the infection had been derived — whether in Serbia, Mace-
donia, public or private brothels, coffee houses, hotels, private
houses, etc. It certainly would have helped if they had been able to
get information from the soldiers directly, but it was Dr. Beron's
opinion, as a result of his experience with numerous soldiers, that
they never told the truth, and always were inclined to antedate
their infection to a period before mobilization in order to escape
the military penalties for having sustained an infection during war
service. To get around this fear, Dr. Beron always assured the sol-
diers in advance that no punishment would be meted out to them if
they told the truth. Of course in every case he compared their
history with the clinical picture of the disease before him.

In many cases the information given by soldiers who had con-
tracted venereal diseases led to the dissolution of brothels and other
establishments where venereal diseases could be transmitted. Shortly
after the outbreak of the war some notoriety was achieved by a
brothel in Chauny near Laon, a French city of about 10,000
inhabitants. This temple of love was shut because a whole group of
infected soldiers, whom Professor Buschke saw in Berlin, unani-
mously reported this brothel at Chauny to have been the source of
their infection. Thereupon this physician reported this to the
military authorities who immediately closed that infamous estab-
lishment.

In general it may be said that with the increasing number of
venereal diseases in the war sectors, the demand for women grew
much greater than the supply. The few prostitutes who, especially
in the smaller places, had to supply the needs of the enormous
masses of troops quartered there, were doomed to disease sooner or
later, despite all sanitary precautions, and of course, transmitted
their infection. In the war book, Four of the Infantry, the author
describes how a German soldier, known to his friends by the nick-
name of Student, is hiding behind the front line in a cellar to escape
a rain of shrapnel and grenades. With him in this cellar is a young
French woman who tells him softly that she is fearfully afraid.
Thereupon the student takes her hand and tells her that there in
the cellar they're quite safe, particularly since he is with her. She
smiles in amusement over his quaint efforts to speak French and
replies that unfortunately his machine is kaput. Whereupon he

VENEREAL DISEASES

103

thinks to himself that this may not be true altogether. At any rate
he ardently hopes that it is false; but the derisive taunt of the
French woman makes him perceptibly cooler. Unfortunately the
lady's remark was all too true. He observes her rusty red hair, her
numerous freckles, her mole with a little tuft of hair growing out
of it, and mutters to himself, "Gosh, what a terrible thing that is!"
"You mean the shooting?" she asks. "No, the other," he replied. To
which she answers, "You leave us many children. What will our
husbands say when they return home?" "Well," he replies mock-
ingly, "will the great nation become much worse as a result of the
blood mixture?" Her answer was, "But who pays, my good sir?"
And he answers, "Many of us pay with our health, girl, and lie
a-rotting in hospitals."

What the student said here was only too true. A considerable
proportion of the young German soldiers who had started out
from home in perfect health and through some good fortune had
escaped all the dangers of the front, nevertheless fell a prey at one
front station or another. The machine which had become kaput
became in northern France and Belgium a standing designation for
this drastic casualty of the war and was a constant reminder of this
tragic aspect of military exploits. In the occupied territory the
following little ballad was sung:

Malheur la guerre,

Nix pomme de terre,

C'est la misere partout.

Papa Kanon,

Mamon ballon,

Ma sozur machine capout.

("0 Isabella, rends-moi mon mart I")

After all that has been said, it should not surprise us to learn that
the hospitals for the venereally diseased, called, by the way, in the
language of the German soldiers, Knightly Castles (Ritterburgen)
were always crowded. One does not need a particularly vivid imag-
ination to conjure up the way in which the ordinary soldier was
treated in these places. For the physicians no method of treatment
was too drastic if only it promised to accelerate the healing process.
Wandt has left us very painful descriptions of the agonizing
screams that could be heard during the daily application of the
torturous syringe.

One very important aspect of venereal diseases during the war is

104 THE SEXUAL HISTORY OF THE WORLD WAR

the question of their distribution among various age groups and
classes of population. Even at the very beginning of the war it was
observed, in practically every land, that a great proportion of
these diseased were recruited from the ranks of the older married
men and soldiers who came from the country rather than the city.
Shortly after the outbreak of the war Dr. Albert Neisser made
these observations in Germany. It was his opinion that in regard to
the first category of men just mentioned, there was considerable
extenuation in that they were men of settled and ordered lives and
accustomed to a certain routine in erotic fulfillment, and that, torn
away as they were from their normal family life, they were par-
ticularly oppressed by long continued abstinence. He felt, further-
more, that among the lower classes in general the views relative to
sexual intercourse are much looser and more naive. Even in peace
time an enormous percentage of the men who come for treatment
to the hospitals and clinics (generally workers or poor people of
other kinds) are married. The other important point that impressed
him was the growth in the number of country people who had
become diseased. Whereas, until that time, rustics— men and women
alike — had been almost entirely free from venereal disease, it was
now to be feared that, unless special measures were taken the whole
countryside would be swept by these plagues.

This supposition of Neisser's was thoroughly established by sub-
sequent events. Statistics show, for example, that in the lazaret at
Stettin a third of the soldiers treated there in 1915 for venereal
diseases were married; and as the war went on this number in-
creased. In the hospital at Fraustadt the number went up to 41 per
cent and a similar tendency was observable among men who had
come from the country. On the basis of these data, Dr. Blumenfeld
of that hospital drew the following conclusions:

1. Married men constitute a noteworthy proportion of those
suffering from venereal diseases, a proportion considerably
greater than that in peace times.

2. The older aged groups are more represented than is the case
normally.

3. A portion of the rural population which, in general until now,
has been free from venereal diseases has become infected. In
this way the rural communities are now exposed to the danger
of being swept by these diseases.

VENEREAL DISEASES

4. Occasional prostitution appears to have a considerable share
in the dissemination of venereal diseases.

Concerning the question of how these diseases were acquired, it
is impossible to get a closer notion because the statistics are con-
tradictory on this point. At a meeting of military physicians held
at Lemberg in 1915, Dr. Moldawa stated that of all venereal dis-
eases s per cent were gotten at the front, 20 per cent at stations
immediately behind the front or on the route of the march, and 75
per cent outside the domain of the army. There can be no question
that in these figures the proportion of the battlefront is consider-
ably underestimated. Dr. F. Veress has stated that one-third of the
venereally diseased soldiers on the east Galician front had gotten
the disease at home, whereas the other two-thirds had become in-
fected in the zone of operations and the stations behind the line.

In order to prevent the dissemination to the hinterland of vene-
real diseases contracted at the front, or immediately behind the
lines, certain regulations were adopted whereby the soldier about
to depart for a furlough would have to submit to a physical
examination. Unfortunately, however, this regulation was either
neglected or so superficially observed that no good came of it.
There were constant complaints from women that they had be-
come infected by their husbands who had returned home on a
furlough to seek a bit of happiness. We can readily see how there
was a continual exchange of the germs of infection between the
front and the hinterland. In one of his war novels, Bruno Vogel
has given a tragic account of a young officer who had become
diseased shortly before his furlough and, during his visit home,
impregnated his wife while giving her the devastating infection he
had so recently acquired.

The observations of Professor Fraenkel of Breslau on this point
are exceedingly illuminating. In speaking of the sexual dangers to
the women from the war he said, "After having been absent from
home for almost a year, I returned home from my military duties
but I was unable to give much time to my gynecological practice
because I had to devote myself almost exclusively to surgery.
However, among the comparatively few women who did seek me
out during the first few months after my return and desired gyne-
cological treatment, I saw ten gonorrheas. It is worth while to
pause for a moment to inquire where and how these women had
gotten the infection. Four of the women were wives of officers

io6 THE SEXUAL HISTORY OF THE WORLD WAR

who had been in Belgium or France for a long time. Two others
were wives of reserve officers who had just returned from Russia.
Those six cases were undoubtedly consequences of the war. The
two reserve officers had found life dreadfully dull out there in the
desert waste of the Eastern front, so when the looser of the two
got a Polish girl into his hands he induced his more sedate friend to
have sexual intercourse with her also, and he virtually pushed the
girl into the bed of his surprised and rather reluctant friend. Of
the older officers one very calmly narrated that shortly before his
furlough, which had come as a sudden surprise, he had been unable
to withstand the temptations of a prostitute and then, unaware of
the fact that he had sustained an infection, returned home and had
coitus with his wife. As soon as he noted the calamity that had
befallen him, he immediately brought his wife, who didn't know
what it was all about, for examination; but it was too late for
gonorrhea had already set in. Another one of the older officers had
infected his wife once before and now made her believe that it was
no new infection but only a recurrence of the old one.

In this and in all similar cases it is worth noting that the soldier
sustained the infection shortly before getting the furlough. This is
much less due to sexual impatience than to the temptation of the
front station which they happened to be passing.

Through the energetic devices mentioned before, the German
military officers succeeded in checking the spread of venereal
diseases. And in the first two years of the war some fairly advan-
tageous results were obtained. But all the statistics which were
interpreted as indicating a considerable decrease, or at any rate
limitation of the spread of venereal disease, later on proved them-
selves to be quite illusory. Like many of the other devastating
effects of the war the disintegrating effect of venereal diseases
showed itself only later in the post-war period. With this condition
we shall have to deal later when we take up that period in some
detail. For the present we will content ourselves with stating that
the fear that sexual diseases would become widespread proved to
be well-founded, and that this effect, well known from all previous
wars, could in the World War be effectively regulated by strict and
almost inhuman discipline but could not be thoroughly controlled
or eliminated.

It is purely deception when people wished to make the Revolu-
tion and the license consequent upon it responsible for the rotten
fruit of war. Among others Dr. Merkel has shared this viewpoint.

VENEREAL DISEASES

107

But when we examine Dr. Merkel's report we see that all they find
is that the soldier in the trenches had very little opportunity of
contracting venereal infections, a circumstance which certainly
needs no proof at this time. Merkel's figures prove how numbers
can be true and yet lie. For many soldiers the Armistice was their
first real furlough and hence the venereal diseases sustained imme-
diately after the end of the World War are to be regarded as true
shots in the head (Kopfsckiisse) and their wounds must be regarded
as sacrifices of war. Indeed it may be said very definitely that had
more furloughs been granted during the war, the number of diseased
would have been far more considerable, for in those departments
of the service where furloughs were frequent or more extensive, as
among the U-boat crews and the navy in general, Dr. Fikentschers
has observed a threefold increase in syphilis and a doubling in
the number of gonorrhea cases as compared to the normal peace
time figures.

In the other armies which lacked the hygienic organization of
the Germans, these consequences became apparent even earlier. In
its New Year's issue for the year 1916, the Wiener Medizinsche
Wochenschrije asserted that, in the first year and a half of the war,
venereal diseases had shown a terrifying growth among the Austrian
army and the civil population, a condition which threatened the
physical and mental degeneration of posterity. (We might remem-
ber in this connection the reminder of one of the military physicians
of the Austrian army who, already at the beginning of 191 6 had
noticed, among the sequelae of gonorrhea, certain diseases of the
organs of generation which made procreation impossible.)

Regarding the spread of venereal diseases in the English army,
we can, in the absence of figures, say only that the numbers must
have corresponded to the enormous increases of these diseases in
England itself concerning which we shall have more to say later
on. Moreover, in the memoirs of British soldiers we nearly always
find some reference to venereal infections as, for example, the
instance in Graves' novel, Good-bye to All That.

As far as the Russian army is concerned, we know that in Kiev
in May of 19 16 a medical congress was called to combat venereal
diseases, and at this meeting a most grievous picture was drawn of
the unsanitary conditions in the Russian field of occupation. Dur-
ing peace times the district of Kiev treated about 2000 cases annu-
ally, but during 191 5 this number had risen to 20,500. It was known
that the majority of twelve-year-old girls were already infected.

io8 THE SEXUAL HISTORY OF THE WORLD WAR

The complete license and immorality of soldiers returning home
from the front made any form of control impossible. The congress
decided to distribute informative leaflets in these districts and to
give lectures to the soldiers concerning the dangers of these dis-
eases. The great dissemination of venereal diseases in the Czar's
realm is sufficiently obvious from the consequences of the Russian
occupation in Galicia. In 191 6, after the Russians had departed,
there were in Lemberg alone 1340 women whom the police drove
to the hospitals for treatment as against an average of 100 in peace
times.

In the French army also syphilis sowed a great harvest. The
famous syphilologist, Professor Gaucher, reported at a meeting of
the Paris Academy of Medicine in 19 17 that the health of the
people was being progressively undermined by lues, and demanded
immediate action. Whereas in the first sixteen months of the war
syphilis increased in the French army by one-third, in the last
months of 1916 the total figures were two-thirds above normal
times. A great number of these diseased had contracted their in-
fection in or near France. Two sick soldiers stated that they had
become infected in the hospital where they had been taken because
of certain wounds they had sustained on the battlefield. It was also
noted that the number of married men among these sufferers was
comparatively high.

In the United States the spread of venereal diseases was noted
immediately after mobilization. Whereas in the last twenty years
the venereally diseased in the army was 16 per cent, Russell found
that it had risen to 40 per cent.

The terrifying spread of venereal diseases which the war brought
about contrasted strangely with the illusions of those who accepted
all the terrors and tears of war as the fata morgana of the free play
of impulses as unconstrained as among animals. The infection of
the people of all the warring nations rose even though every sort
of measure was taken against it. In 1917, for example, the chiefs of
the German military were concerned with various measures which
would have to be taken when demobilization began. They came to
the conclusion that, even after the end of the war, it would be
necessary to keep the military brothels and the hospitals for the
venereal diseased in order to protect those at home from infection.
All the sanitary divisions were ordered to keep the strictest watch
over these matters and to report every single case with full details
concerning the source of infection, etc., by which means it was

VENEREAL DISEASES 109

hoped to prevent the spread of these diseases at the end of the war,
but all these familiar methods of control proved to be quite illusory
among the victors as a result of the madness of victory, and among
the Central powers as a result of the chaos induced by their
downfall.

A Hungarian lyricist, Andreas Ady, in whose veins there runs
syphilitic blood, wrote at the outbreak of the war that "his despised
and holy wounds had risen on the body of all mankind." This
visionary picture, awful and apocalyptic as it is, did become literal
truth as a result of the vast flood of venereal disease which spread
over all the battlegrounds of Europe and was carried to all parts of
the world when the armies returned home.

WOMEN SOLDIERS AND FEMALE BATTALIONS

V/omen Soldiers in Battle — True Stories of Female Soldiers — Russian
Female Soldiers — Yellow Martha — Schoolgirls on the Battle front — Other
Strange Cases — Women Battalions of Kerensky — The Charge of the Fe-
male Battalions — Rout of Male Soldiers — Serbian Women — The League
of Death — Disguised French Women — Arrests of French Women Dis-
guised as Male Soldiers— Female Aviatrices — Mounted Female Guard of
London — English Amazons — War Propaganda of Women — Unusual Cases
of Disguise — Man or Woman, Which? — Examples of Female Heroism —
Attempts of German Women to Smuggle Themselves into Army — Ukrain-
ian Battalion — Women in Polish Legion — The Grave of the Unknown
Woman Soldier

EVEN during the war the question of the participation of female
soldiers aroused considerable interest. From the known data on this
subject, it appeared that in practically every army certain women
participated as actual soldiers, partly with the knowledge and con-
sent of the military authorities and partly unknown to the latter,
in which case, disguised, they made their way into the army. In the
latter case it appears likely that we are dealing with a sexual-patho-
logical satisfaction of impulse. At the very outbreak of the war, Dr.
Burchard called our attention to the fact that many female trans-
vestites were eagerly joining the army and participating in all the
bloody functions of war.

We certainly shall not be wrong in assuming that in a great
number of these cases of female soldiers we are dealing with trans-
vestitical and homosexual impulses.

Women who feel an unconquerable urge and compulsion to put
on masculine clothes and to practice a masculine calling, and all
other members of the weaker sex whose whole psychic attitude is
masculine, obviously will have a particular predilection for the
soldier's life which has always been regarded as the masculine
occupation, par excellence. It is understandable then that such
women, when the opportunity is offered, will seize it gladly and
eagerly devote themselves to active warfare. We must not, to be
sure, overlook the suspicion that in certain cases the predominant
motive was a sadistic one.

Inasmuch as statistics concerning the number of female soldiers
in the various armies during the World War were not published,
we have to rely upon conjecture. It would appear as though they
were most numerous and active in the Russian army. Even at the

WOMEN SOLDIERS AND FEMALE BATTALIONS in

beginning of the World War, the Cossack regiments had a number
of Cossack girls in their ranks. This is to be explained by the fact
that in Russia, in the country districts at least, women have always
performed a masculine role in a way that is unfamiliar to the rest
of Europe; this had been true for centuries, particularly in the Mir
communities. In the middle of 191 5 the London Graphic had the
following report concerning the Cossack and certain female military
chieftains:

"In Russia four hundred women are bearing arms. Most of them
are part of the Siberian regiment. Until now fifty have been killed
or wounded. The number of these warring women is noteworthy,
especially when one takes into consideration the numerous diffi-
culties which stand in the way of such activities, for in no land
were women drawn into military service. The sixth regiment of
Ural Cossacks had a female captain by the name of Kokovtseva.
This woman was twice wounded and received the St. George
Cross with guarantee of a military pension. It appeared that for
many years her husband had belonged to a certain Cossack regi-
ment and when the war broke out she arranged matters in such a
way that she got into the same regiment. The Don Cossacks also
had a woman officer in the person of Alexandra Ephimowna
Lagareva. Another woman, Olga Jehlweiser, could look back upon
a very interesting and distinguished war record. She served in the
Manchurian War under General Rennenkampf and participated in
numerous important battles in Manchuria. Recently she has been
very active in the battles around Grodno. Another Russian woman
fighter who participated in three battles was known as the Yellow
Martha because of her blonde locks."

In addition there is data concerning the heroic deeds accom-
plished by Russian women who were disguised in men's clothing
and of the subsequent military honors that came to these heroines.
Thus the Toronto Globe for February 4, 19 15, reported that
among the wounded who had returned to Moscow from the front,
there was a nineteen-year-old girl by the name of Olga Krasilnikoff.
After she had participated in nineteen battles in Poland she sus-
tained a leg-wound. This girl had enlisted under a masculine name
and the deception had escaped notice until this time. She was
awarded the St. George Cross of the fourth class. Then the New
Orleans Call for February 10, 191 5, reported that Natalie Tychmini,
a co-ed from Kiev, had received the St. George order for distin-
guished service. In a battle with the Austrians at Opatow she

ii2 THE SEXUAL HISTORY OF THE WORLD WAR

brought munitions to the trenches under very heavy fire and then
stayed on to take care of the wounded. This girl had also come to
the front in man's clothing. After she was wounded she remained
on the battlefield and was found by the Austrian Red Cross who
took her under their care. When the Russians recaptured Opatow
she was discovered in the hospital and sent back to Kiev.

In February, 191 6, the Russian military headquarters reported
that in the vicinity of Bojan a certain corporal, Glustschenko, had
performed a deed of indubitable heroism. This person was really a
young girl named Tscherniawska who had begged for this par-
ticular assignment, an extremely difficult and dangerous task, which
entailed crawling into the enemy's barbed wire. Despite the fact
that she sustained a grave leg-wound with a fractured joint, she
performed her task and then crawled back to her own trenches.

That this participation of Russian women in the war was not
confined to the lower ranks of society, appears from the following
two reports. The first, derived from English newspapers, is given
here just as it appeared in the Secolo:

"We are dealing here with the war adventures of young girls
who took part in the Russian defensive in Galicia and in the Car-
pathians. Without informing anyone of their plans, twelve of these
girls left school in Moscow, made their voyage to Lemberg where
they dressed as soldiers and succeeded in joining the army without
having their sex detected. One of the young adventuresses, Zoya
Smirnow, has described the fate of this unmounted corps of Ama-
zons. The first time that bombs burst upon their division, the two
youngest, Schura and Lydia, each only fourteen, began to cry;
soon all the others began to weep. Their first victim fell in a battle
in the Carpathians, torn to pieces by a bomb which fell at her feet.
Her friends buried her and set up a cross with a tiny inscription.
Subsequently, the fourteen-year-old Nadya Zhana and Schura were
wounded. Finally the narratress herself was injured and when, as a
consequence of a second wound, she was sent to the hospital, her
sex was finally discovered."

The second case was reported to the Temps from St. Petersburg:

"In a military hospital at Charkov there was recently brought a
woman soldier who turned out to be the famous Princess Wolonsky
who had participated in the offensive in Wolhynia as an ordinary
soldier. The princess was twenty-two years old, tall and athletic.
Her husband had fallen at the beginning of the war and a little
later her father and brother also. To avenge the death of her

WOMEN SOLDIERS AND FEMALE BATTALIONS 113

loved ones, the princess joined an infantry regiment which stood
on the Russian southwest front. When her sex was discovered, she
was brought to Kiev. But she managed to escape and joined an-
other regiment, in all the battles of which on the Wolhynian front,
she actually participated without being recognized. The princess
expressed her desire and intention of returning to the front."

The creation of several women's battalions after the first Russian
revolution aroused the greatest enthusiasm. The initiative in this
enterprise is attributed to Kerensky himself. As early as July, 191 7,
the news of the first of these battalions was brought to the north
front. The first Russian women's battalion, under the leadership of
Marie Baktscharow, who had been advanced to the rank of lieu-
tenant, finally arrived at the northern front. This first battalion
comprised 250 women, some of whom had already participated in
battles and some of whom had belonged to the sanitary corps as
nurses. There were also some eighteen-year-old students.

We might remark here that the famous English woman, Miss
Pankhurst, who was touring Russia at this time, regarded the for-
mation of this women's battalion as the greatest event in the world's
history. According to Swiss reports, the first Russian women's
division received its baptism of fire in the vicinity of Smorgon.
The women fought so bravely that they heartened all the neighbor-
ing divisions. Concerning their method of warfare, the London
Exchange has reported the following interesting information:

"A peasant girl related that she found herself right next to a
German, ran him through with her bayonet and at the same time
shot him and took his helmet for a memento. . . . Another girl
related that before they went over the top they were all very much
excited and scared. But when the order to charge came she forgot
everything and leaped over the top with the mob of screaming and
bellowing girls. All excitement had virtually disappeared when the
time came for shooting. This despite the fact that bombs were
bursting all around. The first dead man that she saw made her
pause for a moment but she just had to go on and therefore passed
right over his dead body, a thing to which she soon became quite
accustomed. Another girl related how her battalion had surrounded
a company of German soldiers who threw away their weapons, held
up their hands and shouted in amazement, 'Good Lord! Women!' "

A certain Austrian officer whose regiment fought against a Rus-
sian women's battalion sent us the following communication:

"Especially in attack did they show themselves to be brave and

ii4 THE SEXUAL HISTORY OF THE WORLD WAR

not infrequently blood-thirsty soldiers. Naturally we were quite
far from feeling any knightly sentiments towards these Penthesileas.
Nevertheless these battles of men against women were thoroughly
abominable to us because they contradicted our esthetic feeling,
which God knows, the war had made hard enough, and so when-
ever possible we avoided fighting them and just tried to capture
them. It is interesting to note that these female warriors did not
wear trousers, but blue smocks. These were the first skirts we had
ever seen that left the knees bare. It is quite remarkable that these
Valkyries, who in attack proved themselves so extraordinarily brave,
were quite different in artillery fire. (We also saw the same thing
among the Bosnians who in attack were distinguished by a sort
of bestial wildness, whereas under cannonade some of them grew
so terrified that they actually committed suicide.) As far as we
could learn, these female Russian soldiers were nearly always
urban workers who had been unable to find employment at home
(remarkably enough, many were of German descent), or working
women whose husbands had either fallen in the war or been in
military service for a long time."

The Serbian women also took an intensive part in the wars
against the Austrian troops who were invading their land. Among
this little heroic band of freedom-loving people there were battalions
of women even before the war. These female volunteers who entered
the army called themselves The League of Death; and at the head
of this organization there stood a simple peasant woman, advanced
in years, who was the daughter and widow of heroes who had
distinguished themselves in the wars of independence against the
Turks. Later on this enlisted corps grew so large that a whole
regiment was formed and stationed at Kragujevac. The commander-
in-chief of the army accepted most gratefully the services of these
female troops. In a short time this little female army comprised
2400 fighters equipped with all the instruments of war and trained
by officers. This contingent included peasants, urban workers and
women of rank.

After the outbreak of the war, American sources reported the
case of a young Serbian woman, named Sophie Jowanowitsch, who
had received permission from King Peter to fight in the army
wearing the uniform of a common soldier, and also of another
seventeen-year-old co-ed of Belgrade, Milena Manditsch, who also
took part in the war as a volunteer.

In France, women soldiers were not permitted in the army.

WOMEN SOLDIERS AND FEMALE BATTALIONS 115

Early in 1915 the press of the Central Powers reported that Parisian
women had determined to form a regiment of women at the head
of which there was to be a certain painter, Madame Arno. How-
ever, these reports were not confirmed. Still in January, 19 16, the
Eclair reported that certain women had volunteered their services
to the army and been accepted. In addition French women partici-
pated in the war in certain cases disguised as men. We might men-
tion two such instances. Among the wounded who were brought
to Noisy-le-Sec, there was a young laundry girl dressed in the full
uniform of a French soldier. Not until she got to the hospital was
her sex discovered. The other case concerned three women, a
young woman and two girls, aged twenty-two and twenty-six, of
the town of Montrueil (Henriette Jary, Marie Rouault and Geor-
gette Vincent). These enterprising ladies had cut their hair and
put on the uniform of the Zouaves in which disguise they were
accepted into a Zouave regiment at Fort Rosny where they had
many friends. When the detachment had to leave for the front the
sex of the women was discovered and they were arrested for ille-
gitimate wearing of military uniforms and on suspicion of engaging
in espionage activities.

Of much greater importance is the activity of female chauffeurs
who were used for transporting troops during the first march of
the Germans on Paris. Moreover, French female fliers came to the
support of male aviators. The Petit Journal reported in October,
191 5, that Madame Richter, the general secretary of the patriotic
union of the French female fliers, and Mile. Provost-Damedos, the
secretary of this organization, had sent in a most urgent request to
military headquarters that their services and those of their col-
leagues be immediately requisitioned. The exploits of the French
military flier, Helene Dutreux, became especially famous. She was
known in the army as the Eagle and won the cross of the Legion
of Honor. She was a Belgian by birth and was the first woman
whom the French government permitted to become a military
aviatrix in Paris.

There were also some English women who tried to get to the
front as soldiers. It is well known that there was a women's auxil-
iary corps which was permitted to serve only at home. Then too,
there was organized in London a mounted female guard which was
prepared for action in the event of a German attack. In all these
cases there is much more involved than merely playing at being
soldier. The same is true also of the nurses who in England and the

n6 THE SEXUAL HISTORY OF THE WORLD WAR

United States were organized in a thoroughly military fashion.
The American writer, Hayden Church, has left us a description of
the English Amazons, the so-called female recruits of Kitchener.
This female army was composed of girls and women of all classes
between the ages of eighteen and forty. In this army could be
found famous titled women who, not quite a year ago, might have
been found in the streets of London battling with police and after
their arrest going on hunger-strikes until they were released. Now
all these girls and women were being taught to shoot and ride and
were being systematically drilled by army officers just as were the
recruits of Kitchener; they were drilled according to the same
regulations as the soldiers of the army. Among them could be found
many stenographers, teachers, saleswomen, etc., who were em-
ployed and who sacrificed all their leisure time in order to take
part in these maneuvers. All classes of society were represented in
this female army, from the highest nobility down to cooks. Many
noble women had themselves transferred to other companies be-
cause they held it to be beneath their dignity to drill in the same
group as their own domestics. The chiefs of this army were Lady
Londonderry and her adjutant, a certain Mrs. Haverfield3 the
widow of an artillery officer and the real founder of this female
army. It was the hope of the latter that her troops would actually
get to the firing line. If that hope should turn out to be impossible
Mrs. Haverfield felt that the drill would have been a definite
advantage anyhow. She felt that her soldiers could at the very
least be employed as messengers to and from various fields of battle.
Their corps grew faster than it could be accommodated, and they
had branches in practically every city. All their recruits were urged
to practice shooting and it was their fond belief that if official
authority were issued to them, they would be able to give the
German invaders a very hot welcome indeed.

These English women who were carried away by their enthusiasm
for war, exercised a most pernicious influence through their strong
and noxious war propaganda, the importance of which was much
greater in this land, where women played so large a part, than
that of the female regiments. Thus in September, 1916, the Morning
Post carried a letter signed Little Mother and bearing the title:
A Message to Pacifists. This letter was then reprinted as a brochure
and in one week some 75,000 copies were distributed. The writer
expressed the profoundest regard for her sex and attributed the
most important function in the world to them as the mother of the

WOMEN SOLDIERS AND FEMALE BATTALIONS 117

Ukrainian Women Soldiers in the Austro-Hungarian Army

men who were fighting not only for the honor of the fatherland
and their kingdom, but for the whole moral world. This woman,
who was so filled with a keen sense of the tremendous importance
of women in that crisis of world history, then went on to say
the following: "Send us the pacifists and we will soon show them
and the rest of the world that in our homes at least there is now no
longer any calm sitting by the fire in the winter and no enervating
attempts at cooling oneself during the heat of summer, but that for
the women of the British race there is only one temperature, namely
that of white heat."

An even more precious example of the war propaganda carried on
by English women, is the letter of a sailor's wife to the recruiting
office reprinted in the Daily Mail: "If there should be any need of
men, do not forget to give women the chance of fighting for their
King and land. I own a musket and munition and I know how to
use them. There are many others like me. That is why I am holding

u8 THE SEXUAL HISTORY OF THE WORLD WAR

myself ready in case you should call us or need us or at least give
us the chance of putting an end to a few fat Germans."

Despite these brave words, participation of English women was
confined at the most to certain technical services. Early in 191 5 the
Italian press reported that under the command of Countess Castle-
reagh there was formed in London a regiment of four hundred
women who accompanied the English army to the continent and
helped in telephone, commissary and munition services. The women
of this regiment were for the most part suffragettes between the
ages of twenty and forty. The formation of another regiment was
even considered. These female troops had uniforms of their own
and in place of hats, they had dark blue head coverings.

One also heard of a Women Signallers' Territorial Corps under
the command of the sister of Lord Kitchener, Mrs. Parker. The
members of this corps received a complete course in the art of
signalling in all its branches including semaphore, flagging, whistling,
heliograph, lamps, telegraphy and wireless.

In the quarterly reports of the Wissenschaftlich-humanitaren
Komitee, edited by Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld, to whose rich collec-
tion we owe the most of our information on this subject, we find
two cases of English women who were so drawn to the war that
they tried to accompany the army to the battlefront disguised as
men. The first was a young girl who accompanied a group of
military fliers. The French gendarmes caught her at Dijon. She
wore the military uniform of the flier and had short hair. They
decided that the best thing to do for this twenty-six-year-old
English woman was to send her back to her parents. The other
case concerned an English woman, Flora Sanders, who issued a
book under the title An English Woman Sergeant in the Serbian
Army, participated in the whole Serbian offensive and finally was
wounded at Monastir.

When America entered the war the American women did not
wish to lag behind their English sisters and showed themselves to
be just as enraptured about the war, even if their propaganda
activity didn't assume the proportions of the British. They wanted
to be of service in order to show that the men could not get along
without them. In the great Preparedness Parade which took place,
even before the war, on May 13, 1916, 20,000 women participated.
Then, too, other preparations for war were made by women. Thus
in Washington two hundred young girls and women, the majority
of them wives of officers, attended a two weeks' training camp in

WOMEN SOLDIERS AND FEMALE BATTALIONS 119

order to learn the rudiments of military practice. After the declara-
tion of war some American women, following the French example,
entered the flying corps; and one woman was reported as being
accepted in the coast artillery as a signaler.

In the German army, as in the French, the entrance of women
was prohibited and yet there are historical examples that this prohi-
bition was violated by certain women who dressed up as men.
Cases of this sort, which became known during the World War,
make us suspect very strongly that in practically every one we
are dealing with what is called in modern sexology men-women
{mannweiber) or female transvestites. In the press of the Allies
there frequently appeared reports that in the German army women
were participating as volunteers. Thus the Warsaw correspondent
of the Petersburg Dijen reported that he had seen such Amazons in
the very first months of the war. These women were captured and
brought to the hospital at Ouyazdoff. They all wore regular uni-
forms and from their wounds it was possible to judge that they had
participated, not only in trench defensive warfare, but in bayonet
fights as well. One of them actually died from bayonet wounds.

Frequently the press reported unsuccessful attempts by women
to smuggle themselves into the army in male disguise. Thus there
is a case of a girl of nineteen, Clara B. of Insterburg, who, up-
rooted from her home as a result of the military campaign in East
Prussia and unable to find employment, decided to join the army.
She cut her hair, donned male clothing and joined a company of
men. In some way or other she was able to evade preliminary
examination. At any rate for a couple of weeks she went through
all the drills and maneuvers. Finally, when it was impossible to
defer the medical examination any longer, she went to the leader of
the detachment and confessed everything. All her entreaties to the
contrary notwithstanding, she was refused permission to remain in
the army; and after she had been provided with women's clothing
she was sent home to Danzig where she was able to train as a nurse.

We now come to the interesting question of the erroneous deter-
mination of sex of which an instance was reported in the Berliner
Volkzeitung. On the basis of this report, we are inclined to think
that the war lust of many women was very likely due to such
erroneous determination of sex.

In one of the suburbs of Berlin there was a girl, Erna B., a
domestic, who had several times applied to the military authorities
with the most passionate and earnest request that she be permitted

120 THE SEXUAL HISTORY OF THE WORLD WAR

to join the army. Her first request was made immediately after the
outbreak of the war when she was eighteen. Of course at that time
she was refused and was informed that in the German army women
were not wanted. When she came of age, she once again applied,
both in writing and in person, for permission to join. She asserted
that ever since her childhood she had always felt and acted like a
boy, and that she had always been interested in masculine activities
and professions. Because of these assertions the physician of the
post where she was applying began to think that this girl might be
a case of erroneous sexual determination, one of those remarkably
interesting cases which in recent years have occupied the attention
of scientists. For this reason she was turned over to the specialist,
Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld, with the request that he ascertain whether
Erna B. was a case of erroneous sex determination which would
warrant legal alteration of her sexual status. As a matter of fact, the
examination revealed that the masculine feeling of the young girl
was due to her physique and her spiritual life, the masculine male
sex characters being so predominant that she could be regarded as
belonging to the male sex. On the basis of these results, the Fraulein
requested the court at Potsdam to permit her to change her name
from Erna to Ernest and also to wear masculine clothing. Further-
more, she requested that her application for military service be
given the earliest possible consideration now that the former
obstacle had been removed. This case leads us to inquire whether
a considerable number of those cases of former times, where
women pressed forward to join the army, would not, on investiga-
tion, have turned out to be cases of erroneous sex determination, a
concept which was unknown before our generation. As far as the
allies of Germany are concerned, E. K. Mygind had reported that
Turkish women frequently accompanied their husbands to the
battlefields and took part in the battles as, for example, in those on
the Caucasian front. In the Austrian army the entry of women into
active military service was not hindered by law and there were a
number of instances to show that women did make use of this
freedom. A very well-known case was that of Fraulein Marie v.
Fery-Bognar who fought in the Austro-Hungarian army as a vol-
unteer, was promoted to the rank of corporal in 191 6, and for her
valorous deeds was presented by the Emperor Franz Josef with a
brooch decorated with his name. The first and only woman who
won the Order of Franz Josef in Austria-Hungary was the wife of
the district commander of Lublin, Lieutenant v. Turnau. She was

WOMEN SOLDIERS AND FEMALE BATTALIONS 121

no soldier but through her personal bravery and her heroic deport-
ment in the Carpathians stayed the flight of a receding division and
heartened them anew to further combat. There were a considerable
number of women in the Austrian army who served as volunteers
in the Ukraine. Thus we read of a Friiulein Jarema Kuz in the
volunteer-Uhlan squadron of the Ukrainians, whose pale energetic
little face reminded people of the early pictures of Napoleon.

Many reports appeared in the Austrian press concerning the
Ukrainian volunteer battalion, a peculiarity of which was the pres-
ence in their ranks of women who did everything that the men
did. According to international law, they were soldiers just like the
men. The famous dramatist, Franz Molnar, once had a long conver-
sation with one of these soldiers, Sophie Haletchko, a blonde, girlish
and very pretty young student of twenty-four who wore on her
breast a medal for bravery and who had already been promoted to
the rank of sergeant-major of cavalry. She had been in the field ever
since the beginning of the war and, all in all, had been in poor
health only nine days. This young girl, who was a native of Lem-
berg, had studied German and Slavish philology at Graz, and,
shortly after the outbreak of the war, had volunteered to serve in
the Galician-Ukrainian division. She said she had been unable to
remain at home and felt that now everyone would have to go out
and do something; hence she had interrupted her studies for the
doctorate and sneaked into the army of the Ukrainians where she
won signal distinctions. Franz Molnar was especially impressed by
the fact that the hands of the girl had remained fine and womanly,
that her eyes still had something dreamy and spiritual, and that her
glance, despite the fact that she had already been engaged in war-
fare for more than a year, had not changed like those of the
majority of intelligent men who, after only one month of war
experiences, get a totally new, peculiar and unrecognizable look.

Furthermore, women were also to be found in the Polish legion
which in 19 16 fought on the Austrian side. Such a legionnaire was
Stanislawa Ordynska who, married very young, had declared that
she would not consent to be separated from her husband and went
to the battlefront with him. The Berliner Lokalanzeiger estimated
that there were more than two hundred women serving in the
Polish legion of the Austro-Hungarian army. In the Neuer Pester
Journale, Vilma Balog described a visit to a Hungarian barrack
hospital where she was attracted to a very young boy not yet six-
teen, thin and very meager, whose face shone lovingly above his

12 2 THE SEXUAL HISTORY OF THE WORLD WAR

Hungarian uniform. ... A few minutes after he entered the bath-
room a young woman physician came by and announced in great
surprise that this young soldier was a girl whose secret had been
revealed in the bathroom. This young girl was the daughter of
well-to-do parents and had been well educated in Budapest. After
her mother's death things went badly for the family and her only
joy was the company of her older brother. But when the war
came, he was removed from her side and so great was her yearning
for him that she decided to follow him. She provided herself with
soldier's clothes and succeeded in boarding a military transport. An
old and kindly colonel, who did not suspect the truth and admired
the pluck of the youngster, helped her to get to the battalion of her
brother which was on the firing line and had been exposed to a
terrific assault. The poor girl found her brother dead but she re-
mained in the field and took part in a number of battles. Her
comrades reported that her bravery, heroism and self-sacrifice in-
spired and heartened soldiers and officers as well. But the poor
youngster became so exhausted by the strain that she had to be
bought to the hospital.

There are many similar instances where women sneaked into
the army by one subterfuge or another and performed deeds of
indubitable and almost incredible valor. About the middle of the
war, the activity of women soldiers became a favorite theme for
journalists and this theme was varied in innumerable ways. How-
ever, as people slowly but surely became tired of the war, not much
was made of this theme and one heard less and less of female
soldiers who had paid for their bravery or foolhardiness with their
life. Not until the Russian revolution had to protect itself against
enemies converging upon it from all sides, did the participation of
women in man-murdering war become really serious. The women
soldiers of the female battalion called into existence by Kerensky
took their places in the field and fought for their newly achieved
freedom in magnificent disregard of death.

In this historic conflict between two world views the sex of the
female soldiers was in no way considered a factor; Russian girl
soldiers who fell into the hands of Russian counter-revolutionaries
or, after the peace of Brest-Litowsk, into the hands of Austrian or
German units that were still camped on Austrian territory, were
treated without any quarter at all just like their male colleagues of
the Bolshevik ranks. Not long ago some one wrote a communica-
tion to the Vienna newspaper, Der Tag, revealing the fate of an

WOMEN SOLDIERS AND FEMALE BATTALIONS 123

unknown Austrian woman who, clothed as an officer, had fought
and died near the Piave. The communication follows: "On my
return from Italy I met an Italian near Treviso (whose name and
address are known to me). In the course of conversation he related
the following incident with the request that I publicize it in the
newspapers of Vienna. In this way he hoped that it might some day
be possible to establish the identity of that unknown woman and
to inform her relatives of her demise. The Italian went on to relate
that this dead heroine was venerated in all that district and that her
grave was always kept fresh and wreathed with flowers by the
Italian women of the district. In the cemetery of Falze di Piava in
the province of Treviso there is to be found the grave of a woman
who participated in the Italian defensive in November, 19 18, and
who died in the Italian hospital as a result of injuries sustained in
this campaign. This woman wore the uniform of an Austrian
officer and fought in the first ranks of the Austrians near the Piava.
She participated in the conflict with the Arditi Italiani at Isola dei
Morti. She was found in a dying condition by the Arditi. A number
of the Austrian captive soldiers were brought before her but none
of them could identify her. The dead heroine was buried in the
cemetery of Falze di Piava and now her grave is marked by a stone
which bears the inscription: 'An Unknown Woman who cannot be
better identified than with the words, Clothed as an Austrian
Officer.' "

Chapter 7

HOMOSEXUALITY AND T.R ANS V ESTITI3M

Notorious Paragraph 17s of the German Penal Code — R6le of the Homo-
sexual in War — Exiled timings Return to Germany — Tragedy of the Con-
genital Invert — Heroic Actions under Fire — Despised by Military Authori-
ties— General Ignorance of Pathologic Abnormality — Comradeship, Pairs
of Friends, Officer and Buddy — Other Erotic Friendships— French Toler-
ance of Sexual Inversion — Is Homosexuality Contagious? — Heterosexuals
vs. Homosexuals — Homosexuality Combined with Masochism — Feminine
Urning and Transvestities — Two Transvestite Friends — Female Imper-
sonators on the Battlefront

CONCERNING homosexuality during the war-period, especially in
Germany where the question aroused considerable attention even
before the war, we find enormously valuable information in the
reports of the Scientific-Humanitarian Committee {Wissenschajtlich-
humanitaren Komitee). This committee was called into life by
Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld for the protection of homosexuals and as the
official organ to agitate for the reform or abolition of the notorious
Paragraph 175. The committee attempted to establish the viewpoint,
based on undeniable facts, founded on scientific investigations and
the experiences of thousands, that homosexuality, the love of per-
sons of their own sex, was neither a crime nor a vice but an
emotional tendency deeply rooted in the nature of many human
beings. Under the leadership of its founder it continued its activity
during the war and in its quarterly reports which appeared under
the title Am der Kriegszeit published the only extant material
concerning the role of homosexuals in the great struggle of the
nations. Most of the following cases are derived from this rich
source. It will not escape even the most superficial observation that
in a war where tremendous masses of men were deprived of every
contact with the other sex, that homosexuality would be bound to
play an important role. Even in peace times this problem made its
appearance in connection with the living together of masses of men
for months and years during their period of military service. In
general it appears that the notions concerning the extent of homo-
sexuality and pseudo-homosexuality (intercourse between men other-
wise heterosexual and utilized simply as a substitute for normal
sex intercourse) in the army and in the navy, were not a little
exaggerated. At any rate the military authorities in those lands
where the legal code recognized the concept of unnatural inter-

124

HOMOSEXUALITY AND TRANSVESTITISM 125

course were considerably exercised by this problem. This was espe-
cially true among the Central Powers, whereas for the majority of
the Allied nations the legal prosecution of homoerotic intercourse
was unknown. The dark side of this picture as far as the Austrian
army was concerned was shown to the world when the espionage
activities of the Austrian commandant, Redl, were revealed. This
Redl, who was constitutionally homosexual, was at the head of the
secret service of the Danube monarchy; and he fell a victim to his
homosexual love for the Russian military attache at Vienna who
utilized this fact by employing the infamous device of blackmail
known to have been used against many homosexuals. In this way
he compelled Redl to sell to the Russians the plans of the Austrian
general staff. All this became known later and was held to be
responsible— which was probably not true— for the defeat of the
Austrian forces during the first months of their Russian campaign.
When the Redl affair became a theme for public discussion, one
portion of the press brought reports concerning the large dissemi-
nation of homosexuality in the K.u.K. army whose corps of officers
felt it necessary to protest against what they regarded as an unjust
generalization.

The corresponding conditions in the German army were treated
by K. F. v. Leexow in his work on Army and Homosexuality. In
the reports of the Committee referred to above there appears the
following interesting statement of a lieutenant with homosexual
tendencies :

"It is untrue that homosexuality is very widely spread in the
army and navy. Just as in civil life, it constitutes a very small frac-
tion but it is sufficiently important not to be overlooked. Anyone
who is blind to these facts in ordinary life will also be unable to see
them in the military service. The situation is different, however,
for the informed person. He will see urnings in every department
of the service, among U-boat crews, fliers, the most feudal cavalry
squadrons, the lowliest food transports, etc. I once saw a vigorous
artillery man who didn't look to me at all like an urning, but after
a short time I got two pictures of him, one dressed as a chauffeur in
a military costume and beneath that a little inset showing him
dressed in female garb. Whosoever lacks the capacity or knowl-
edge for detecting what is typical to urnings will not see a homo-
sexual even when he is sitting right next to him. That many people
have gotten the impression that there were more homosexual offi-
cers than urning soldiers is simply due to the fact that as a result of

126 THE SEXUAL HISTORY OF THE WORLD WAR

his superior position the officer was more frequently involved in
this type of affair than the common soldier. For my part I have seen
as many homosexuals among the soldiers as among the officers.
Among the noncommissioned officers there were fewer homosexuals
and this class did not attract the urnings at all. The few homo-
sexuals that I did meet in this group were former officers who,
after having been discharged, had enlisted as common soldiers and
gradually won promotion. I knew only one active homosexual
sergeant."

Another soldier has asserted that on the basis of his experience
in the garrison and elsewhere the extremely common notion that
there were two homosexuals to every hundred men was an exag-
geration. Of the one hundred and fifty men in his garrison there
was not a single soldier who could be suspected of homosexuality
— and these men were recruited from all walks of life. However,
this man was ready to admit that his few observations were insig-
nificant by the side of the thousands which Dr. Hirschfeld had in-
vestigated. What was more, this man was well aware how difficult
it was to designate someone as homosexual without having that
person's own confirmation of his state.

At all events, the outbreak of the war produced the remarkable
phenomenon that an unusual number of homosexuals streamed into
the army and voluntarily joined the ranks. In this group there were
a large number whom public opinion on the subject of homoerotic
love in Germany in the fear of Paragraph 175 had driven from
their fatherland before the war. Of the homosexuals who were
members of the committee more than fifty per cent, constituting
many hundreds of men, volunteered their services to the army; and
of course there were thousands of homosexuals not members of
the committee, who were also in this group. They lay in the
trenches on the Western front, they fought under the triumphant
ensign of Hindenburg and they risked their lives in the navy in the
wars against the British empire. From every land they returned to
Germany to take up the cause of their fatherland which had not
understood their situation and had forced them to leave their native
soil. Many homosexuals who had mastered foreign languages suc-
ceeded in obtaining false passes from friends in neutral lands and,
at great danger, made their way back to Germany.

Like all the mass phenomena of war which cannot be attributed
merely to accident, this impatient and impetuous crowding into the
army deserves our attention. In the study of Burchard that we have

HOMOSEXUALITY AND TRANS VESTITISM 127

already referred to, we find the following reasons for this enthusi-
asm for war which surpassed the normal average reaction in these
matters: "According to our experiences and observations, these rea-
sons lie much deeper. It has frequently been shown that homo-
sexuals are less rooted to their family than heterosexuals; that cor-
responding to their sexual idiosyncrasy — as a sort of equivalent for
the reproductive urge which is lacking— there can be noted in a
large majority of these cases at least, an increased sense, interest
and absorption in the general or social welfare. As a result of a lack
in family sense, which is present from the very start and which is
aggravated by the external relations which stand in the way of an
adequate love satisfaction, many homosexuals show a definite
tendency to an unsettled adventurous conduct of life, a fact which
explains why so many of them are to be found among sea-faring
men, explorers, and vagabonds of all sorts. But this circumstance
also enables us to understand why they are moved by such a tre-
mendous passion for war. Furthermore, many of them must have
been attracted by the possibility of living for a long time in an
exclusively masculine environment which even without any coarse,
sensual activity, exercises upon the majority of the homosexuals the
satisfying and releasing influence of erotic satisfaction. Suffice it to
say, that deep down in the sexual peculiarity of these men can be
found the psychological motives for the tremendous rapture with
which they greeted the outbreak of the war and which led them to
wish to participate in it to a degree in no respect inferior at least to
that of heterosexual men."

The report of the Committee calls our attention to an even more
illuminating explanation of the war enthusiasm among urnings.
"Among the causes which drive homosexuals to war perhaps the
most tragic one is that wish or hope, expressed by more than one
of their number, that a bullet might put an end to their life which
they regard as being a complete failure from the point of view of
the present conditions and notions. Driven by this feeling, many
an urning officer exposed himself to the thickest rain of bombs and
the most deadly attacks. Only recently a flier whom I had con-
gratulated on his distinctions replied that in truth, his disregard of
death was nothing more than disgust with life. Many other homo-
sexuals felt exactly the same way. Here, for example, is the letter
of a simple bomber:

"Every evening the boys would go out for some girls. This
■would probably give them a great deal of pleasure. Many times I

128 THE SEXUAL HISTORY OF THE WORLD WAR

was asked why I didn't go along. I was too embarrassed to give any
answer and turning away sought to find some task which I could
bury myself in. . . . It is my greatest wish to get into the field as
soon as possible and to meet an honorable death for otherwise I
will be compelled later on to make an end of my rotten life due to
my homosexual tendencies for which I am not at all responsible. It
is better that my mother should be able to say, 'My Fritz died a
heroic death for his fatherland,' than that people should say, 'Sol
A suicide, eh?' "

These are lines which bring before us the whole tragedy of the
constitutional homosexual. We might ask concerning these German
homoerotics just what fatherland they did have, and for what free-
dom were they fighting? Were they not happier under the French
or Belgian governments which more than a hundred years earlier
had abolished penalties for homosexuality? Very frequently the
letters of German urnings expressed the hope that the fatherland
would reward them for having participated in the war by rescind-
ing that infamous paragraph which sentenced them to infamy and
exile.

At the outbreak of the war there were in Germany a consider-
able number of former officers who had fallen into the hands of
blackmailers or had collided with Paragraph 175. Of course all
such people were mercilessly expelled from the army, a practice
which was retained even during the war. Among the homosexuals
who streamed into the recruiting offices to volunteer their services,
there were certainly a large number of former officers who hoped
to regain their former military positions. All these men had to file a
special request to the throne which in nearly every case was re-
jected. These unfortunate homosexuals showed the most remark-
able perseverance and again and again submitted their applications
but the most they accomplished was getting into the army as volun-
teers without any rank or title; occasionally they became substitute
officers, but they could never hope for promotion. Dr. Hirschfeld
has reported the following two cases:

A former lieutenant who had been expelled from his regiment
a few years before the war after he had fallen into the hands of a
blackmailer (due to his homoerotic activity) enlisted immediately
after mobilization and submitted three petitions to the crown in
rapid succession, all of which were, however, denied. Then the
man journeyed to the East Prussian front and succeeded in inducing
his former general to restore him. He requested his company chief

HOMOSEXUALITY AND TRANS VESTITISM 129

to give him always the most dangerous and most difficult tasks; in
one of these "jobs" he himself captured twenty-two Russians and
had a number of other distinguished exploits to his credit. How-
ever, he fell ill and had to be taken to a hospital, but before he was
cured he rejoined his regiment. Finally he succeeded in obtaining
permission to serve for the remainder of the war as volunteer but
without any prospect of promotion afterwards.

The second case concerned young Lieutenant R. who had de-
serted his ship a few days before the outbreak of the war. Through
a cabin window it was observed that he had coitus with a certain
sailor. Investigation proved that the young naval officer, who was
scarcely more than twenty years old, had performed other offenses
of this kind. The young man, hovering between suicide and flight,
chose the latter course and made his way to America. But when the
war broke out and an overwhelming patriotic enthusiasm came
over Germans everywhere, even such as were separated from their
fatherland by an ocean, he could not remain away from home.
Since he knew Danish, he borrowed the papers of a Dane and got
to Europe aboard a Scandinavian vessel. Arriving at a Swedish
harbor he hastened to Wilhelmshaven in order to place himself
before the military court. After having served the necessary sen-
tence, he took up arms in behalf of Germany. This officer who was
examined by Dr. Hirschfeld was finally released because of his
innate homosexual tendency, and joined the infantry as a common
soldier.

The antipathetic attitude of the military authorities was the more
difficult to understand in that these pitiful victims of an antiquated
sexual morality were the very ones, who, for the reasons above
mentioned, were psychologically best prepared for the war and
actually proved this on the field of battle. Even Burchard com-
mented upon the surprising vitality which these individuals showed
and which no one would have thought possible in the light of their
condition in peace times. Burchard also called attention to the fact
that a disproportionately large number of distinctions went to
homosexuals. This surprising energy and activity on their part is
really amazing when one remembers that their nervous power is
generally lower than that of the normal man. Let us quote from a
homosexual soldier on this point.

"I am speaking of virile homosexuals in front service. In con-
trast to their heterosexual comrades they suffer from a number of
disabilities. Thus we find among them a large number of so-called

i3o THE SEXUAL HISTORY OF THE WORLD WAR

neuropaths, the labile condition of whose nervous system leaves
much to be desired in the way of mental health. Furthermore the
majority of them are inferior to their heterosexual fellows in
physical capacity, which becomes particularly manifest in the first
period of drill. I myself experienced during the first weeks of my
training what an enormous amount of will-power was necessary to
keep me from failing and breaking down. Then, too, there are the
spiritual humiliations which are added to the crop of sorrows when
one's comrades or superiors observe, or even surmise, one's failing.
I need not say that the sensibilities of the normal soldier on this
point are none too delicate. In view of these facts it seems to me
that for the homosexual to survive the period of training is a greater
achievement than in the case of his normal brother."

But despite these intense difficulties, the homosexuals did not fail,
with the exception of those of female constitutions, concerning
whom we shall have occasion to speak later.

These urnings in the field of battle showed a remarkable com-
plexity of emotion on the one hand— a strongly developed esprit de
corps and a feeling of comradeship, and on the other a deep pain at
the horrors of war to which the finest representatives of every
nation were being sacrificed; in addition faithfulness, love and self-
sacrificing devotion to the fatherland was combined with a great
sorrow that the latter would have nothing to do with those of its
sons who happened to be urnings.

We have already mentioned that the homosexual soldiers were
very brave warriors. We have now to call attention to the fact that
homosexual officers were especially noted for their kindly treat-
ment of the men entrusted to them. Nevertheless the military
authorities and the hinterland maintained their antipathy to homo-
sexuals, and, not content with merely eliminating urnings from the
army whenever they were detected, they also maintained a very
lively propaganda against these unfortunates, evincing a terrifying
ignorance of the true nature of the homoerotic constitution. In
this propaganda they were abetted by the moral societies who dis-
tributed to the soldiers little tracts which branded as more shameful
than anything else that act in which man does that shameful thing
to another.

As against this, those homosexuals who were on the field of
battle tried their utmost to build up, in the minds of their com-
rades, a more reasonable conception concerning their condition.
Thus' the following communication was sent us by a homosexual

HOMOSEXUALITY AND TRANSVESTITISM 131

soldier (once an officer) who, at the outbreak of the World War,
enlisted as a volunteer and so distinguished himself that he was
awarded the Iron Cross:

"I worked very faithfully for the common cause, gave many of
our fellows our literature and got them to the point where they
were interested in the fact of homosexuality and then answered
the questions which their interest would prompt them to ask. I
came across some remarkable views and many times I was dismayed
at the horrible lies which had been disseminated about us. Stupidity
seemed to be celebrating its greatest triumphs in regard to our
condition. I am certain that if everyone would do his share in the
interests of the whole class of homosexuals and help dispel the
legendary lies concerning us, great progress would be made. I will
admit, though, that it is somewhat easier for me inasmuch as I can
talk wisely, since I have overcome false modesty and become filled
with the consciousness of my destiny. Would that all my colleagues
could be freed from their oppressive burden through open and
valiant combat!"

The comradeship which developed between the soldiers who
shared all the trials and dangers of war, this splendid fruit of the
war so much praised by Remarque, must have been especially
pleasing to the homosexuals for obvious reasons. All phases of the
soldier's life favored the development of this comradeship concern-
ing whose ethical value there circulated some excessively flattering
notions. Very frequently, even among normal people, it penetrated
beyond the outer limits of the homoerotic and was thus, to speak
the language of psychoanalysis, characterized by libidinous com-
ponents. The reports of the Committee emphasized that, to a large
extent, the friendships between homosexual soldiers were purely
platonic ones. As in the times of heroic antiquity there were, during
the World War, pairs of friends who in the heat of battle retained
their bond of friendship. There was, however, one conspicuous dif-
ference: that while in antiquity these friendships would be boasted
of and would indeed be a source of honor — one need only recall
how the ancients celebrated the holy band of Thebans which con-
sisted entirely of lovers — in our time the friends kept a secret of
their friendship for they knew that if they were to vow their
allegiance to the ancient ideal nothing could shield them from
petty suspicion and malicious gossip. Yet this love-comradeship
which Richard Wagner praised so enthusiastically in his Art 0) the

i32 THE SEXUAL HISTORY OF THE WORLD WAR

Future, as an ally in war deriving from the most inviolable and
necessary laws of the soul, is in no wise completely extinct.

This was true not only of Germans but also of the English where
many pairs of friends fought side by side. In addition it can scarcely
be questioned that the same things were true of the French, Rus-
sians, Serbians, and Belgians, for no nation has the right to call
another by homosexual names of opprobrium as was so frequently
done during the war.

Dr. Hirschfeld has distinguished between three forms of intimate
comradeship: the consciously erotic; the unconsciously erotic; the
unerotic. Rut these forms are rather difficult to distinguish in their
manifestations inasmuch as a strong spirit of belonging together
animated all the men, and they realized how much each man de-
pended on the other; also since social or sexual intercourse with
women was nearly always absent, some of these male unions are
not quite as obtrusive as they would have been at home. The
assumption that the consciously erotic form of comradeship was
not infrequent is the more justified since there are reports of a not
inconsiderable number of such cases between soldiers of the same
rank as well as between soldiers and officers. We might quote one
example of this type of comradeship: two older comrades who
mothered and tended a younger one of about twenty or twenty-
one. Between the older ones there was a sort of jealousy as to who
would be more pleasing to the younger one. It was almost pathetic
to see how concerned they were about their youthful friend and
how they endeavored in every possible way to lighten his burdens
and assist in his duties. Their relations to the younger one had
definite sexual components. Very frequently of a morning one
could hear the older ones bickering as to who would be the one to
embrace the loved one on that day. The trio made no secret of their
feelings but none of their colleagues ever spoke disapprovingly on
the subject.

There is one curious fact which we might mention at this point,
one which, in view of the well-known tolerance of the French in
sexual matters, may not appear surprising to us: the native popula-
tion of the occupied districts in northern France looked with
sympathetic understanding upon such friendships among German
soldiers. In many cases such friends could meet at certain French
homes.

According to the official standpoint of the German military
authorities on this subject, whenever, during the war, cases of homo-

HOMOSEXUALITY AND TRANSVESTITISM 133

sexual constitution and practice would be discovered, there would
have to be military punishment meted out. Reports are unanimous
in concluding that such affairs were multiplied during the war. In
most cases they concerned officers who were immediately sent
home and placed before a military court; whereas non-commis-
sioned officers and common soldiers usually got off with some
slight disciplinary penalty like a fortnight's arrest — this owing to
the chronic scarcity of cannon fodder in the German army. If the
suspected officer was not able to dispel every bit of doubt, he was
certain to be discharged, even if the military court found him not
guilty. Despite the fact that in the case of many other misde-
meanors, officers were dealt with very lightly, homosexuality among
them was more severely punished than among non-commissioned
officers and ordinary soldiers, in order to maintain strict discipline.
It was commonly believed that the homosexual officer did not know
how to maintain the proper distance from his subordinates and that
therefore his presence in the army might prove to be a source of
insubordination. And in truth there was some justification for this,
as homosexual officers were generally very popular, but it could
not really be ascertained if they maintained worse discipline than
other officers.

As far as the judgments of the military court are concerned,
when there was no evidence that coitus had taken place but only
that the constitution of the officer had expressed itself in kissing
and being tender to his subordinates, the penalty was a humiliating
prison sentence. One officer who was expelled from service, as a
consequence of such an affair, has left us an account of the whole
matter :

"During the winter I was wounded near Bakalarzewo and found
myself the youngest officer of the regiment of a reserve battalion
at O. Despite my very respectable size I was known as Baby. One
day there came an ensign from the cadet corps, Count L. with
whom I immediately fell in love. We had known each other slightly
from the corps. He returned my love entirely for he, a blond,
blue-eyed fresh youth of eighteen, was also an urning. Soon we
became inseparable friends and the major and other older officers
rejoiced at the splendid relationship which had grown up between
superior and subordinate, for Karl had been placed in our company
and had been more or less entrusted to my hands. So I took care
of his education and soon he received his sword and with it the
permission to live outside the garrison, and to stay out after the

i34 THE SEXUAL HISTORY OF THE WORLD WAR

tattoo whenever he wished it. What was more natural, then, than
for him to live at my residence. . . . Later on, when they were
considering my discharge, they found this fact especially very
peculiar and grave. So Karl and I lived together, went into service
together, etc. When we didn't go out of an evening, we dismissed
the servants and sat for a long time arm in arm, in close embrace,
saying many tender and lovely things to each other, spinning
golden for the future and building beautiful castles in the air. . . .
Sometimes it was very late when we got to bed. To you, doctor,
I can confess that we also engaged in sexual activity, but only
rarely and in a thoroughly fine, esthetic, but never punishable, form.
For two whole months we enjoyed our love happiness together."

One day both of them were surprised in bed by the lieutenant
after the attention of the officers had been called to their relation-
ship. The suspicion was confirmed; Karl was sent into the battle-
field where he fell a week and a half later, and the writer himself
was brought before the military court. Asked whether he had had
sexual activity he replied that it was the business of the court to
prove that he was guilty and not his business to prove that he was
innocent. He was temporarily released and sent to the front on a
flying expedition where he was wounded. While in the hospital,
the report came to him that because of his neuropathic constitution
he was discharged. The writer concluded his account with these
words: "If I were to say that I was not sorry that I could no longer
wear the King's uniform, I would be telling an untruth. After all,
I was a soldier. But I am not unhappy, or at any rate, distraught
about it. The conviction that he has performed a great sacrifice fills
a man with a sort of proud and joyous satisfaction. I will not
permit myself to be robbed of the idea that the love of urnings is
at least as holy and pure, good and noble as any heterosexual
inclination."

It is an interesting question whether homosexuality could be con-
tagious on the battlefield and infect men of normal constitution.
Lissmann held that there was no foundation at all for the fear that
urnings could transmit their perverse inclination by having a rela-
tion with heterosexual men. The best student of this question, Dr.
Magnus Hirschfeld, has stated even more strongly that this fear
was utterly groundless. While it is perfectly true that the normally
constituted person can occasionally have homosexual relations, it is
totally untrue to conclude that in this way they can become homo-
sexual. The relation that they attempt with a homoerotic is in such

HOMOSEXUALITY AND TRANSVESTITISM 13S

cases to be regarded as a form of dissipation. Where there is no
homosexual constitution, there is no homosexual seduction. At any
rate no one who, before the war, was heterosexual, became a homo-
sexual during the war as was reported occasionally.

As a matter of fact, most of these pseudo-homosexual acts, which
took place during the war, were a result of strong alcoholic intoxi-
cation. Mendel has reported a case which is an illustration of
Hirschfeld's assertion that there are periodic neurasthenics who, in
an abnormal state, are more homosexual and in their normal state
are more heterosexual and for whom alcohol releases the fairly
weak homosexual components by diminishing the inhibitions. The
case concerned twenty-four-year-old lieutenant R. N. who was
accused of abusing his position. While very drunk he had lured
some orderlies into a billiard room and, after putting out the light,
had embraced them and made homosexual proposals to them. This
man, a former student, had previously been quite heterosexual and
had had normal intercourse with women. In his defense, the lieu-
tenant asserted that he was hopelessly drunk and the examination
revealed no reason to doubt his contention. In reports there are
other examples of pseudo-homosexual actions but without the influ-
ence of alcohol and merely as a result of sex hunger. One such
case, the account of a homosexual soldier, is published in the report
of the Committee. One night when this soldier had finished his
watch at the telephone, one of his comrades came over to him and
requested that he have sexual intercourse with him. This soldier, a
perfectly heterosexual man, had no suspicion that the other was a
homosexual. He would have made the same request to any other
comrade who was known or friendly to him. Such homosexual acts
of heterosexual men were carried out simply jaute de mieux.

It is very interesting to note how such relations were regarded
by heterosexuals. Very frequently in court cases, emphasis was
placed upon the horror entertained by normal men of the un-
natural practices. But many observers who lived with soldiers and
spoke with them on these subjects were unable to discover any
trace of that mythical horror of homosexuality.

Lissmann has reported a case where homosexuality was combined
with perversion. In a certain field-hospital he met a homosexual
clothing fetishist who confessed that he had very frequently mastur-
bated with the uniform of a comrade who was quartered in the
same room with him. Professor Hiibner has reported an even more
complicated case of homosexuality combined with masochism,

i36 THE SEXUAL HISTORY OF THE WORLD WAR

coprophagy and color fetishism. This was a soldier who voluntarily
took upon himself the dirtiest tasks, did everything to humiliate
himself with soot and dirt, masturbated excessively in public and
private everywhere and subsequently laid violent hands upon a
comrade.

Among the homosexuals there also were very definitely marked
umings of a feminine cast with feminine psyche and habitus. It is
easy to understand that this group would fail in the war just as the
women with strongly masculine components (the women soldiers
we have already considered) succeeded in it. They were just as
unfit for war as all other homosexuals among whom Hirschfeld
thought there were to be found grave neuro- and psychopathic
disturbances as a consequence of the incongruence with their ab-
normal sexual constitution. Let us give two examples of such all too
sensitive urnings whose reception into the army must be counted
among the brutalities of war.

R. N. was a very soft-hearted man and it fell to his lot to wound
a Cossack. Since there was no pardon forthcoming for the wounded
firebrand and murderer, R. N. was ordered by the staff physician
to shoot to death the wounded Cossack lying at the feet of R. N.'s
horse. In great agony the latter drew back three paces and aimed
at the wounded man who looked pitifully at him. R. N. pulled the
trigger and shot. The bullet which put an end to the Cossack's
life also destroyed R. N.'s mind. For a while R. N. strove valiantly
to overcome his bloody memories but they were too much for him.
Soon he got crying and screaming spells and very grave hysteria.
His pupils no longer reacted to light and he was placed in the
ward for nervous diseases. The other case was reported by an Eng-
lish corporal who was wounded on the field of battle. Near him lay
a young boy of the North Hampshire regiment over whom a
German infantryman was bent. The latter held a water bottle to
the lips of the delirious dying boy who kept on crying, "Mother,
are you here?" The German seemed to understand, for he softly
stroked the feverish brow of the youth with a tenderness that only
a woman would be capable of. Death finally came and when the
soul of the wounded youth was gone the German soldier was seen
trying to hide his tears.

As far as the feminine urnings were concerned, they evinced as
strong a disinclination to active service as their more virile asso-
ciates in homoeroticism displayed a keen relish for it. Correspond-
ing to their feminine constitution they desired to be used only for

HOMOSEXUALITY AND TRANS VESTITISM 137

the care of the sick. Very interesting in this connection are the
self-observations of one homosexual. "My whole soul revolted
against all that we know as war. Despite all my diligent investiga-
tion, I was unable to discover why I should go to war. . . . My
duty did not call me to the service of my state but to the service of
humanity in general. Hence I turned to the sanitary corps where
I would not have to hate but where I could show and use as much
love as I was capable of."

Feminine urnings were therefore to be sought in hospitals, hos-
pital stations, etc., in work which, by the way, was fully as trying
and responsible as any other of the war tasks. Immediately at the
outbreak of the war, numerous homosexuals volunteered their serv-
ices to the Red Cross, thus obeying the instinctive calling which,
as the history of the homosexual problem informs us, urnings per-
formed even among primitive peoples. In the press there appeared
an account of a case which belongs in this connection. It reported
that on the West front there was a certain division which con-
tained a man who could knit and who practiced his rather quaint art
in every free minute. At the beginning all his fellows laughed and
coined the name Rike for him (his name was Friedrich, which in
the feminine form becomes Friedrike; and the abbreviation of the
latter is Rike).

In addition to the category of the homosexuals of female type,
there is the group of transvestites. The very serviceable formula of
Hirschfeld distinguishes between homosexuality and transvestitism,
depending whether the mixture of sex characters (masculine femi-
nism or female virility) extends to the sexual impulse or to other
spiritual marks of sex. According to this formula, when we are
dealing with male transvestites we are concerned with men who
from the point of view of their character are fully to be regarded
as women (vollweiber) , who are moved by an irresistible impulse
to act as women, to fill female positions and, above all, to dress as
women. It must not be supposed, however, that transvestites are
necessarily homosexual. Dr. Hirschfeld saw very many cases in
which transvestitic men and women were normally heterosexual.

This erotic impulse to disguise oneself is then the decisive factor
in transvestitism. Concerning the serviceabilty of transvestites in
war, Burchard has said they are to be compared with other mon-
strosities, particularly strongly developed cases of androgyny.
Through the anchoring of the physical tendency drive to transfor-
mation in the realm of the spiritual, the feeling of utter uselessness,

i38 THE SEXUAL HISTORY OF THE WORLD WAR

so far as war service is concerned, comes to even stronger expression
in transvestites. Many of them haven't the slightest fear of danger
or of extremely difficult and exhausting labor but are constantly
oppressed by the feeling of absolute incapacity for a continuous
masculine life. Burchard knew transvestites who used to go to the
district commander in their female costumes and declare very
seriously that they would go into the field as nurses or canteen-
women but would never live in the garrison as men among men.
In such cases the judgment of the physician, concerning the un-
serviceability for war duties, could naturally not be doubted. But,
as over against this, Lissmann emphasized that it was by no means
certain that any attention was paid to such disabilities as the war
dragged on and men became scarcer. What is more, very few
military physicians knew enough to recognize this condition. Dr.
Kurt Mendel has reported the case of a soldier in whom the trans-
vestitic inclination was so dominant that he preferred to forego
sexual intercourse (only homoerotic intercourse was known to this
unfortunate creature) than wear men's clothing. Mendel, who, with
most sexologists of his time, was of the opinion that homosexuality
alone did not render a man unfit for military service, decided in
this case that since it combined, on a psychopathic foundation, two
aberrations— homosexuality and transvestitism— and that the latter
even predominated over the former, the person in question must
be pronounced unfit for service. However matters stood otherwise,
in those cases where the homoerotic and the transvestitic impulse
came to equal expression.

Those transvestites who were accepted for military service, very
frequently fell a prey to severe hysterical disturbances so that prac-
tically all of them had to be discharged from the army.

Dr. Hirschfeld has reported a case of a transvestite soldier who
felt very constricted in his uniform and during his furlough changed
clothes with his sister who looked very masculine and very much
like him They wished to exchange places for the sister wanted
to continue military service in place of her brother. She was only
dissuaded from this action by the physician who warned her of
the punishment that would follow such action.

In general not much was heard of the transvestites during the
war In Austria a man in woman's clothing was shot because he
abandoned his position. It turned out that he was a transvestite
who had fled, driven by the fear that his condition would become
known The most famous case was that worked up by Dr. Mendel,

HOMOSEXUALITY AND TRANSVESTITISM 139

concerning two transvestites, a twenty-four-year-old salesman and
a twenty-six-year-old singer. They had both been in the field for a
long time and met at the garrison at Breslau where they entered
into intimate sexual relations. In July, 191 7, as they were both
strolling through the streets in female garb they were arrested.
At the request of Dr. Mendel the younger composed a short auto-
biography :

"I enlisted in the war because life was a burden to me and I
wished to find death. After seven months during which time I
strove desperately to bear the fearful burdens of war, I found a
number of men with like inclinations and even had opportunity to
go strolling with a lieutenant, both of us wearing female garb. In
addition we arranged several dances at which we danced as women.
For years I have endeavored to suppress the desire to wear female
clothes but latterly it has become absolutely impossible for me to
inhibit this inclination."

The older of these comrades reported that he had brought along
with him to the battlefield a female wardrobe in order to be a
human being at least for a moment, in which costume he sang in
the casino, danced with the officers, etc. One evening he danced
with a group of paymasters without any of them realizing that he
was not a woman.

This and similar occurrences lead us to see the connection be-
tween the well-known doings at the officers' casino and front
theaters, where soldiers, disguised as women, always played a large
role (even if it was not so large as that common among prisoners —
to which we shall refer in a later chapter), and transvestitism. This
connection is so clear as to render superfluous any further explana-
tion. Let us merely quote this communication from a lieutenant to
the Committee:

"After having participated in all the dangers from the very be-
ginning of the war, I finally achieved a rather pleasant post on the
staff of our brigade. Recently I had a proof of the incredible
naivete and ignorance of the majority in these matters. Our
battalion arranged a party at which the most popular feature was a
'lady in very elaborate costume and blonde wig.' This soldier sang
soprano and in all his movements and bearing was thoroughly
feminine. Our whole staff was represented at this party and at the
table we all discussed the matter. The other men all expressed
their admiration for the performer and opined that he must have
studied very long in order to be able to imitate a woman so

140 THE SEXUAL HISTORY OF THE WORLD WAR

successfully. I expressed the opinion, however, that the man was
acting in accordance with his own nature, that his performance
was virtually an expression of his real self and probably brought
him intense satisfaction. Neither the general, nor the priest, nor
the other gentlemen understood me. I cautiously tried to be a little
more explicit but found complete lack of understanding in every
gentleman, but most of all in the case of the priest. If this was true
of him, how much truer it is of the common soldier."

A very vivid depiction of these matters is to be found in one
chapter in a book already mentioned, Hagen im Weltkriege, with
which reference we conclude our consideration of homosexuality
and transvestitism in the war.

Part Two

Chapter 8

REGULATION OF ARMY BROTHELS

Close Connection Between Military and Prostitution— Prostitution in
Medieval and Modern Wars— Assignment of Soldiers to Prostitutes— Regu-
lation of Field Brothels— Public Houses of the Halting Places— Three Classes
of Houses-of-Joy—Etape Brothels— Degrading Line-ups— Rioting in
Brothels— The Bethune Bordel— Prostitute Life in Ghent— "For Officers
Only"— Lille and its Loose Morality— Brothel Experiences at Havremont
—Rules and Regulations for Army Brothels— A Libidinous Customer— Mad-
Scenes in Officers' Brothels— Modes of Recruiting Women for Brothels-
Compulsory Brothel Service— Continuous Supply of Female Flesh— Misery
of Common Whores

THE close connection subsisting between the military and the
realm of prostitutes is well known from history and has been
treated in many works. This problem found detailed and illuminat-
ing treatment at the beginning of the World War in a work by
Haberling. The World War did not offer any essential novelty in
this matter, but it did differ from all previous wars of history in
two essential points. First, as a result of national conscription, the
majority of the male population of the European nations were torn
out of their normal relationships and became potential victims of
war prostitution. Secondly, the World War was the first conflict
in which trench warfare (what the Germans call Stellungskrieg)
first achieved outstanding strategic importance and, as a result,
changed the conditions under which prostitution could be con-
trolled in the army. Whereas in former military campaigns, espe-
cially during the Middle Ages, prostitutes followed the army and
actually constituted a portion of the troops, trench warfare, which
entailed the sojourning of large military units at the front or at
various intermediate stations, require a correspondingly sedentary
or fixed form of prostitution. This form could only be found in
brothelized prostitution. This had the added advantage of promis-
ing some protection against venereal disease and the possible inter-
ference with fighting power induced by the latter.

141

M2 THE SEXUAL HISTORY OF THE WORLD WAR

At the beginning of the war, the duration and extent of which
was everywhere underestimated, voices were heard demanding sex-
ual abstinence for the troops in the fields in the interest of warfare.
Especially did this scientific debate, for and against the prohi-
bition of sexual intercourse for combatant soldiers, rage in Ger-
many. Haberling was the first to demand that soldiers be informed
that they would be less subject to venereal infection if they con-
sorted only with prostitutes who had a medical card. The famous
sex hygienist, A. Blaschko, who advocated the complete abolition
of prostitution at home and in the field, regarded Haberling's
proposition as dangerous, because it actually suggested to the
soldiers that they have intercourse with professional harlots; and
he emphatically denied that the medical card constituted sufficient
protection against venereal infection.

Already in November, 1914, numerous voices arose, especially
from the side of the physicians who specialized in these matters,
demanding the widest possible prohibition of sexual intercourse to
soldiers. At a meeting of war physicians held at Lille, Professor
Flesch of Frankfurt counselled, among other things, sexual con-
tinence as obligatory for the whole field army — soldiers and officers
alike — for the duration of the campaign, and the closing of all
brothels, taverns, etc., at places where field troops are quartered.
It was the opinion of another military physician, Dr. Kurt Mendel,
that the best way of preventing venereal disease was by demanding
complete continence of those who stood in the field; and he re-
garded this abstinence as being not impossible in view of the fact
that war demanded so many great personal sacrifices which the
soldier was always willing to suffer. He believed that the personnel
of the army would willingly abstain from consorting with prosti-
tutes when it realized that the matter concerned their personal
welfare — that venereally diseased soldiers would be unfit for fight-
ing for many weeks, that, even after recovery from the primary
stages of the disease, there might ensue grave consequences which
every war has brought in its wake such as tabes and paresis, and
that even their own women might become infected. Professors
Kuhn and Moeller wrote an article in which they attacked the
whole institution of brothels and pointed out that these establish-
ments were dangerous, even though an effort was made to keep
sick women out of them through periodic physical examinations.
They proved that it was impracticable, even in a town of 15,000
inhabitants, for almost every regiment that stopped there and pat-

REGULATION OF ARMY BROTHELS H3

ronized the houses of joy suffered a marked increase in venereal
infection. As a result even the supervised brothels had to be shut
after a short time. Furthermore, these two students pointed out, the
whole institution of brothels carried with it a great moral danger.
Since the soldiers were assigned to intercourse with prostitutes they
actually got the feeling that extra-marital intercourse was quite
permissible for married soldiers. For this reason Kuhn and Moeller
felt that complete sexual continence should be demanded for the
whole period of the war.

In other lands too, the question of prostitution in the army was
also discussed, but nowhere with the thoroughness that the Ger-
mans manifested in their analysis of the question or in their regu-
lation of the evil. But, despite all the talk, it appeared that, so far
as the army was concerned in Germany and elsewhere, the question
was decided from the very beginning. In military circles the prohi-
bition of sexual intercourse was not taken seriously, not so much
because it contradicted the normal sentiment, as that it ran counter
to military tradition. As against all the arguments adduced by
scientists, the military authorities insisted that such a prohibition
ran counter to the attitude of the soldier.

That is the reason why we find at the beginning of 1915, when
the war of invasion had already turned into a protracted trench
war, that both sides were well provided with military brothels all
along the line of battle. They were first introduced in the West
and shortly afterward at all points on the Eastern front. These field
brothels, which were found at some slight distance from the line
of battle, were housed in abandoned castles, in little village houses
which had been more or less spared by the war, in wooden barracks
which had been erected for this purpose, or in empty wagons.
Usually they lasted only a short while and the personnel did not
exceed three. They were patronized by soldiers who were on the
line of battle or were returning thence to the second line or reserve.

More important were the public houses at the halting places in
the war sector or what the French call etape, which were erected
for a long period and which, in some cases, had been established
and used by the civil population even earlier. This station was not
exposed to the direct danger of war and served as a sort of center
for all portions of the army who were being sent to the front or
who were being brought back after all sorts of abstinences, includ-
ing sexual ones. It is interesting to note that in these institutions
differences of rank were definitely observed. Everywhere there

144 THE SEXUAL HISTORY OF THE WORLD WAR

existed a sharp differentation between the brothels reserved for
officers and those assigned to the common soldiers. As a matter of
fact, there were three classes of houses of joy — the highest for the
officers, intermediate ones for non-commissioned officers, and the
third for common soldiers. On the Western front there were well-
appointed etape brothels for the troops of the Allied armies at
various points behind the firing lines. These houses were always
marked by a blue lantern if they served officers, and by a red one if
they served common soldiers. The inmates were almost exclusively
French women who had either lived here before the war or had
come as fugitives from districts occupied by the Germans. The
patrons were recruited, aside from those contributed by the French
army, from officers and soldiers of the other Allied forces, par-
ticularly Englishmen. As a result of the negligence with which
the French military physicians treated the whole matter of venereal
disease, these French itape brothels became veritable breeding
places of venereal disease for the English soldiers who had gotten
very little instruction in these matters. In his stirring war-book,
Good-bye to All That, Robert Graves has reported such a case.
One night a young Welshman, who shared Graves' tent, came
home considerably stewed and amazingly happy. It appeared that
the lad, who was. the son of rigidly moral parents, had never had
any contact with women, and had never been told anything at all
about precautionary measures to prevent venereal disease. He had
just had intercourse with a prostitute in one of the blue lantern
brothels. He told his story with a great deal of gusto and concluded
by saying that he had never believed it possible to have so much
fun with women. Dismayed and considerably disgusted, Graves
asked him whether he had thoroughly washed himself afterwards.
Whereupon the poor lad felt quite affronted and replied, "How do
you mean that, Captain? Of course I washed my hands and face."
Graves showed how all these young men threw off in France the
restraint which had weighed upon them in England. They had
money and they knew that only a few days more might be allotted
them in which to enjoy life and love, and so they had no desire to
die chaste. For this reason the station hospitals for venereal diseases
were always crowded to capacity. Indeed, the soldiers always had a
special joke on this subject at the expense of the numerous field
chaplains who were also quartered there for treatment. It may
even be said that many a man owed his life to the blue lantern by

REGULATION OF ARMY BROTHELS MS

virtue of the fact that his experiences in the light of that lantern
had rendered him unfit for military service for some period.

On the German side there were military brothels in all the larger
cities of the war sector, including Lille, Strasbourg, Brussels,
Ghent, etc. In the smaller settlements of the sector, at some dis-
tance from the front, there were harlots who plied their trade in
their own homes rather than in houses of prostitution. In the cities
of the Eastern front, military brothels were erected on the West-
ern models, as we have already stated, particularly in Warsaw and
Lodz.

Everywhere the brothels reserved for the use of the common
soldiers presented the same ugly and disgusting spectacle of im-
mense queues of men standing in a never-ending contingent before
the doors of these houses. These spectacles became a regular char-
acteristic sight during the war. It can scarcely be wondered at that
the sexual hunger of the soldiers, returning from the firing line,
after a long period of abstinence, expressed itself in rather violent
disturbances. Thus, it is reported, that on Good Friday of the year
191 5 Australian and New Zealand soldiers rioted in the red-light
district of Cairo; and a German counterpart to this was the notori-
ous attack on the brothel in Sedan. As a result of the latter melee,
military guards were posted before the houses of joy and orders
were issued that only ten men be allowed to enter the house at once.
But the crowds were so numerous and violent that several times
the doors were broken in and other acts of rowdiness took place.

But generally law and order were maintained. Captain Graves
has left us an account of the management of the brothel at Bethune.
Usually there were about 150 men standing outside the door and
one after another was admitted to one of the three inmates for a
few minutes. The price there was ten francs or about eight shillings
and each woman served practically a whole battalion during the
week for as long as she could last, which was generally about three
weeks. After this period these poor unfortunates, weak and sick,
would retire to private life, sometimes with considerable pride in
their achievement. In one of the most devastating war books, Long
Live War by Bruno Vogel, we may read an explicit account of the
feelings, thought and actions of the men as they stood in line in
front of these military brothels. This account paints for us, in all
its violence and ugliness, the disgusting bestiality of the whole war
business. In another war book, Heinrich Wandt has given us a full
report of brothel life in Ghent. In this town all the temples of love

146 THE SEXUAL HISTORY OF THE WORLD WAR

were confined to a certain little district and here one could see
steady lines of soldiers waiting for hours, just as at home their
mothers, sisters, wives or brides would be waiting for some bit of
food or some other necessity. Inasmuch as the lines of soldiers grew
longer every day the town saw itself compelled to do something to
protect the young girls and women on their way to church service
from the sight of the lust-inflamed men. And so the city erected
wooden fences around three streets where these houses were situ-
ated. In addition to protecting the innocence of its womanhood by
the measures just described, the city also posted soldiers to guard
against possible outbreaks or disturbances. It is interesting to note
that these guards were regarded by the daughters of joy as their
friends and allies, so that soldiers who endeavored to cheat these
painted ladies of the reward of their love never got very far. In
answer to the cry of the outraged prostitute, the military police
would pursue the culprit and would generally overtake him, even
before he had gotten to the limits of the city, whence very slowly,
but none the less energetically, they would drag him back to the
place of his pleasure where he would be required to pay for his joy
in heller and pfennig. The price was generally five marks or an
artillery bread; for specials, which were designated by the appel-
lation French, the price was agreed upon in advance.

Wandt has also left us accounts of brothels for officers and, even
if his report is applicable only to Ghent, nevertheless the general
scheme described by him was to be found in all the large Belgian
and French cities occupied by the Germans. There was a whole
row of places in which the officers could surrender themselves to
their joys quite freely and merrily. Over the entrance of these
places appeared such legends as For Officers Only, For Officers and
Civilians, or No Admittance for Dogs and Soldiers. Wandt mentions
a crystal palace in Jooden Street and the Hotel de la Cloche which
later became a brothel for officers.

In the occupied districts of France, prostitution at the halting
stations, or etapes, naturally was just as common, but here the civil
brothels were permitted to operate for a considerable while after
the German occupation. The center of the French sector was Lille,
known for its loose morality even during peace times, where once
Charles the Bold was met by naked girls after his return from
Spalier. After the occupation of Lille, many brothels could be
found there as, for example, in the Rue de 1'ABC and Frenelet,
whose inmates stood under the control of French physicians and

REGULATION OF ARMY BROTHELS 147

were required to submit to examination three times a week. For
a considerable time these civil brothels were patronized by Ger-
man soldiers without any difference in cost. In Wilhelm Michael's
novel, Injanterist Perhobstler, there is an account of a brothel ex-
perience at Lille. On the Rue de 1ABC three comrades who were
out for a good time suddenly heard some girls calling them to
come in, and they didn't wait for a second invitation. They found
three girls in a room equipped with red furniture. Their hostesses
bade them sit and spoke German, but with such a quaint accent,
that none of the boys could resist laughing. They gave them wine
and asked ten marks for the bottle, whereupon the men refused and
sent one of their number to the market. He brought back five
flasks at one and one-half marks per bottle. The girls cursed their
guests because the sale of wine constituted their profit and it was
a pretty low sort of a fellow who would bring his own wine. The
girls soon became right warm, however, and found their guests
jolly companions. There was some dancing and some preliminary
petting of no delicate sort. One of the men, Michael himself, was
particularly attracted by a girl with curly hair and a dimpled chin
who looked like a model of Renoir. It appeared that she too was
very much taken with Michael, especially after an orderly had told
her that Michael was an adjutant (as the French call it).

When it became evident that, despite all the energetic sanitary
precautions that were being taken, there was no diminution in the
number of venereal patients, the houses of joy were militarized
and the brothels reserved for the use of officers set apart from
those permitted to the common soldier. Hans Otto Henel has given
a very vivid description of a visit to such a brothel in his splendid
war novel, Love on Barbed Wire. One day the announcement came
to their company that all non-commissioned officers and soldiers
who desired to visit the house of joy located in a castle at Havre-
mont would have to report to a certain official and that the visits
would always take place by companies. The thought of women
and of removal from danger for a few hours was enough to inflame
the dull senses of all men and to enkindle again their blood long
grown torpid. During the night preceding the visit to the brothel
Henel heard words of such abysmal animality that by comparison
Rabelais appears a mild and cooing adolescent. When shame has
become superfluous and the spirit has been murdered in the mad-
ness of battle, the sexual impulse becomes merely anatomy which
does not even become ennobled by passion. It is simply a need for

148 THE SEXUAL HISTORY OF THE WORLD WAR

release. The next morning twenty-five of them, under the leadership
of non-commissioned officers, were marched to the half-demolished
castle of Havremont, in which the brothel had been established.
Before the house there was considerable movement and I estimated
that there were about fifty soldiers present.

"How many cows are inside?" asked the sergeant of one of the
groups.

"Ten pieces," was the answer.

As they moved up along the line each soldier had to be exam-
ined for venereal disease by a sanitary non-commissioned officer,
who gave each a tube of preventive salve. Moreover, this official
directed the attention of the men about to copulate to a printed
announcement relative to intercourse with the prostitutes. Most
eyes were particularly caught by point five which dealt with prices.
In the brothel for common soldiers the price was two marks (2^2
francs) for the woman and one mark francs) for the brothel
hostess; in the officers' brothel the price was four marks (five francs)
for the woman and two marks (2^2 francs) for the brothel hostess.

The internal ministration of the houses of joy was not influenced
by the army of occupation, aside from the fact that the hostess
or leader of the brothel was either appointed by the commander
or recognized as chief of her establishment. Apart from that, the
control of the army of occupation was confined to matters of a
hygienic nature which was carried out by German police physicians.
In this way the unfortunate girls could be exploited by the brothel
mothers in the most shameless way and on this point we have
authentic information concerning the administration of the military
brothel at Mitau. Our information (published in KulturwUle for
1929) was provided by a soldier who for three weeks was assigned
to service at the Mitau brothel during July, 191 7. In truth there
was very little temptation for him or his assocaites in this assign-
ment, inasmuch as the first soldier who would be admitted into the
brothel at its opening at four o'clock in the afternoon might be
venereally diseased, thus infecting the girl and all the men who
would lie with this girl after him. For this reason the military
authorities erected near every brothel a little hut where a sanitary
official was quartered who had to examine every soldier that desired
admission to the brothel. Of course, officers were exempt from this
necessity, which may be one factor in explanation of the inordi-
nately large number of venereally diseased officers. Every soldier
had to show the sanitary official his book, containing his name

A Typical Army Brothel on the Austrian Front

150 THE SEXUAL HISTORY OF THE WORLD WAR

and his official designation, all of which information would be
forwarded to his division in order that they might be able to check
up should any venereal disease develop. Every soldier also had to
show the sanitary official his genitals, which were examined for
venereal disease, and had to submit to treatment with protargol and
vaseline. Thus armed, the soldier went into the brothel; and upon
his return he had to stop off at the sanitary official again, to urinate
in the latter's presence, after which he got another protargol injec-
tion. In addition he had to state which girl he had used. The sani-
tary orderly assigned to this duty certainly did not have an easy
job of it.

The Mitau soldier, who is our authority for this point, said that
the military organization of sex intercourse afforded him the pos-
sibility of getting at figures relative to the number of visits to these
brothels. He had a genuinely scientific desire to ascertain what the
facts were in this connection. As a result of his experiences, during
his few weeks as supervisor of the military brothel of Mitau, he
was able to say that the woman who had had the most visits was
a prostitute, named Osol, who on one day between the hours of four
and nine, the regular business hours of the brothel, had had thirty-
two soldiers. Naturally, and fortunately, this did not happen every
day, but the lowest achievement during his stay was on a day
when the six girls entertained only twelve, ten, ten, ten, seven and
six apiece. This same soldier has also preserved for us some very
amusing incidents which took place while he was connected with
the Mitau brothel. One day a reserve officer dropped in from the
front and entreated him tearfully to let him have access to a girl
immediately inasmuch as his train would leave long before four
o'clock — in return for which favor he was ready to pay a con-
siderable amount. At other times soldiers connected with the com-
missary department would bring large boxes of sausages and meats
in order to be permitted to remain in the brothel beyond the time
allotted. This job of orderly was the most unpleasant part of the
whole performance.

At nine o'clock every evening all the rooms had to be thor-
oughly inspected, for very frequently men tried to hide under the
beds against the wall in the hope of being permitted to remain all
night. These slippery customers had to be pricked with bayonets.
In addition, attempts were occasionally made to enter the brothel
at night. To do this entailed climbing over a fence. The guard
posted around the brothel was instructed to shoot at such cus-

REGULATION OF ARMY BROTHELS 151

tomers. Our Mitau friend related that, during the whole war, he
fired just one shot and this took place while he was on sentry
duty at that brothel. Early one afternoon a commissary officer came
to the brothel bringing loads of whisky, despite the fact that he was
already drunk. Towards evening two non-commissioned officers
of his battalion called for him saying that all the soldiers of his
group were waiting for their supper and that he had the key to the
supplies, but this lascivious fellow would not leave. At nine o'clock
he was chased from the brothel with the but-end of the sentry's
rifle. At eleven o'clock he was seen trying to climb the fence and
when he saw the sentries aiming at him he was sober enough to
call out that if they would let him in he would reward them with a
large basket of delicatessen; however, the sentries did their duty
and fired. Fortunately for this libidinous customer, the wound was
very slight. Many another man was more fortunate than he for, by
maintaining friendly relations with the brothel mother appointed
by the military authorities, they were admitted into the brothel
at night through the rear entrance. Very frequently the sentries
would be awakened by noise in the brothel and run in to investi-
gate. On such occasions they would see a whole ring of men whom
they were otherwise taught to regard as their superiors, reeling with
wine.

In the officers' brothel also, mad scenes would frequently be
enacted. Many times the soldiers would be able to observe their
officers beaten by brothel girls, spat upon by them, and hurled
from their doors. Our Mitau friend again is our authority for such
an incident. One evening he and a group of soldiers peeped in
through a window of a superior brothel where a wild party was
going on. At the piano sat an officer beating out a dance to which
melody half a dozen officers, clad in uniform, were crawling about
in a circle on all fours. And on the shoulders of every one of these
officers sat a naked girl who, with slaps and punches, incited her
partner to faster motion, a partner who was no longer chevalier,
but cheval.

Very frequently it was observed that when officers went to the
brothels, they went in large groups which was a token of the fact
that they regarded the visits to these institutions as social pleasures.

As has already been indicated, the internal administration of the
brothel was not interfered with by the military authorities. Thus it
came about that the difference in rank between officers and soldiers
also came to expression in the difference in the mode of life of

152 THE SEXUAL HISTORY OF THE WORLD WAR

various groups of prostitutes. This differentiation was certainly
not less than that subsisting between the various groups of whores
who were members of Duke Alba's army. Whereas the inmates of
the officers' brothel, in general, lived well because they received
large supplies of food from their clients, the common prostitute
had a very hard time of it. The rates fixed for them by the military
authorities were very frequently paid in kind, usually in artillery
bread, and were, on the average, very low. In many districts, espe-
cially in the Eastern sector, the misery of the prostitutes was
appalling. Whereas the officers' prostitutes received between twenty
to a hundred marks, her common sister got no more than be-
tween two and five. On the other hand, the same girl had to pay
to the brothel mother twenty marks daily for food, and inasmuch
as they were prohibited from leaving the house, they had to pay
to the brothel mother whatever she overcharged them for clothes.
Moreover, it was impossible for them to earn anything else, inas-
much as at ten o'clock they would have to go to sleep whether
hungry or satisfied, and whether they had enough for a morsel on
the morrow or not. At that hour the brothels were effectively closed
by the military authorities and the barbed wire fence, three or four
meters high, prevented any departure from the premises. In the
officers' brothels everything was very free. Very frequently of-
ficers' automobiles would call for the girls and drive them away to
some sumptuous castle or tavern where they would spend the eve-
ning in feasting and pleasure. On such occasions the women would
not be brought back to the brothels until morning. Not infre-
quently, as a result of their experiences on the nights of joy, they
returned so infected with venereal disease that they soon had to go
to the hospital especially provided for venereally diseased pros-
titutes.

Just as little as the Germans and the military authorities of the
Allied powers worried about the administration of brothels, so
did the Austrian authorities who concentrated their energies upon
the hygienic measures which they instituted in the regions occu-
pied by them. Thus in all the brothels in the Serbian front the
following notice was posted in three languages — German, Hun-
garian and Croatian:

1. Every girl is required to reject a diseased guest.

2. Drunken and very boisterous guests are not to be taken up
to the room by the girl.

REGULATION OF ARMY BROTHELS

153

3. The girl should demand of the guest that he use a preven-
tive instrument and if he refuses she is obliged to lubricate
his organ with borated vaseline.

4. Preservatives are available at the price of . . .

5. After intercourse every girl is required to show her guest
to the disinfectant room.

6. Whoever practices coitus despite the fact that he knows or
can assume that he is venereally diseased is guilty of a crimi-
nal act punishable by imprisonment.

7. The best protection against infection is the use of a condom
which is to be drawn carefully over the member and then
sufficiently lubricated with borated vaseline. However, if no
condom is available, the member should at least be thoroughly
greased with vaseline. Such grease capsules are in the pos-
session of the girls.

8. After coitus, the member should immediately be washed thor-
oughly with warm water and soap after which the guest
should go to the disinfectant room, the entrance to which
is always marked by a red lamp. The attention of the soldier
is called to the fact that it is his bounden duty to report to
that room and that a neglect of this provision is punishable.

9. Moreover, prophylaxis is advised for the other visitors to the
brothels.

One question remains to be answered. In view of the fact that
the supply of prostitutes was never equal to the demand for them,
and that as a result of their tremendous exertion and the venereal
diseases to which they shortly fell a prey, they could only exercise
their function for a little while. From what source were they re-
cruited? Naturally the first place in the ranks of these prostitutes
was occupied by those women who had practiced this calling be-
fore. But, in addition, there was a growing number of women,
who driven by the chronic misery of the occupied districts, had to
sell their bodies. Of the latter class the majority at first engaged in
clandestine prostitution, but were subsequently compelled to offer
themselves in the public military brothels. In all the cities of the
sector occupied by the Germans there was a very comprehensive
and diligent moral investigation which was designed to insure to
the brothels their needed supply of female flesh. Our Mitau au-
thority has informed us that in those districts the order was
issued that every woman who desired to engage in professional

i54 THE SEXUAL HISTORY OF THE WORLD WAR

immorality would have to do so in brothels. Naturally it was very
easy to traduce girls and women on this basis and many a secret
agent collaborated in this nefarious activity. If one of these secret
agents cast his eye upon a girl and she happened to refuse his
advances, he would immediately denounce her to the military
authorities as one who practiced professional immorality. Nearly
always this poor girl was immediately put under military control,
and it was not very long before she found herself in a military
brothel, no matter how untrue and wicked the accusation might
have been.

This system of supplying military brothels seems to have been
more characteristic on the Eastern front, whereas in the West
there was a slightly different method of supplying brothels. There
women who were caught practicing immorality were arrested for
six weeks during which period they were transferred to military
brothels. Of course, great efforts were made to control the spread
of venereal diseases derived from these prostitutes. Every luetic
soldier would immediately be asked whence he had derived his
disease and the woman was sought out to be punished for it. In the
occupied districts of France, those women who practiced clandes-
tine prostitution were arrested by the military police and brought
before a police physician. If they were found healthy, the physi-
cian demanded that they voluntarily place themselves under Ger-
man control. There was no point in assigning these women to
brothels, inasmuch as in Lille and in other places the practice of
prostitution, despite control by the moral police, was carried on
even outside of public houses.

It is clear that in general (particularly in the districts occupied
by Austria) the way was prepared for an abuse of this sanitary
precaution of controlling the origin of disease. Every soldier was
able to designate any woman at all as the source of his venereal
infection. Dr. Anton Blumenfeld, chief physician of Fraustadt,
admitted that it was very difficult to ascertain the exact focus of
infection. Many soldiers in answer to the query replied, Private
or Decent girl, etc., in cases where they had been accosted on the
street and had cohabited with the women in a hotel.

Among the troops of the Allies the situation was different to
the extent that generally their troops had to deal with a friendly
population and the police regulations did not have to be so rigidly
observed. As a result there was a large increase in the number of
venereal diseases as indicated by such accounts as that of the young

REGULATION OF ARMY BROTHELS iSS

Welsh officer referred to above, as well as by the tremendous spread
of syphilis in the French army concerning which we have also
spoken.

There can be no doubt at all that the system of prostitution
organized by the military authorities constitutes one of the darker
chapters of the World War. Through it the erotic realm was
stripped of every human feeling and degraded to a bestial need of
the basest sort. But as long as there will be wars there can be no
escape from such erotic degradations. War prostitution, as we have
sketched it above, is a most disgusting compromise between mili-
tarism and sex hunger, the regulation and rationing out of a most
primeval human instinct, namely, love. We can scarcely overesti-
mate the moral consequences of this institution of the war and its
attendant phenomena. This much is certain: that the sexual life of
a soldier with its concentration in the field and station brothel
contributed immeasurably to loosen the bands of the bourgeois
family and to diminish its importance.

Many wives and husbands believed that when the man would
be torn out of the circle of his family, the purity of marital love,
accounted as sacred by the church and society, would readily be
maintained amid all the terrific storms of the war and preserved for
the coming reign of peace. But was it possible for the man to return
home in the same way as he had left after he had held in his arms
upon a lurid bed warmed and befouled by masses of men, a pitiful
victim of war prostitution? Not even enthusiastic friends of war
would maintain this. The forms in which extra-marital intercourse
lived itself out in the battlefield and in the station en route to the
front, the forms in which the common man had to live out his
sexuality in the few occasions when it was at all possible to do so,
were more inhuman than any previous condition of a like order
that venal whoredom had ever before assumed throughout the
whole course of human history. Many millions of human lives
were lost amid the cannons' thunder during the war; but its mon-
strosities, among which war prostitution certainly does not occupy
the lowest place, destroyed men's faith in the moral values of a
society which had brought about the war.

Chapter 9

PROSTITUTION BEHIND THE LINES

"Wild Marriages" of Army of Occupation — Prostitution in Belgium — The
Mad Chase after the Male — Warning Posters — Child Prostitution — Ger-
man "Vice Squad" — Macedonia "House of all Nations"— Gypsy Quarters
of Prostitution — Exploiting of Wife and Daughter by Husband — Poverty
and Prostitution — Institution of Field Brides — Love for an Artillery Bread
—Child "Panderers and Pimps" — Reception of Officers by Women in Con-
quered Towns — "Sign" Negotiations — Estaminets, Dispensers of Good
Cheer— The Largest "Woman Market" of Ghent— The "Coffee Shop"
Deception — Prostitute Victims not on Casualty Lists

BROTHELIZED prostitution, which we have analyzed in the pre-
vious chapter, constituted an unsuccessful attempt on the part of
the military authorities to place under sanitary control the sexual
relations of their soldiers. This attempt was unsuccessful because
the number of brothel inmates near the battlefields and behind the
lines, or the halting stations as they were sometimes called, was not
sufficient to meet the enormous demands.

As far as the occupied districts in the west were concerned,
Lille can be regarded as the chief seat of prostitution. In the course
of their lengthy occupation, many of the soldiers quartered at Lille
entered into a sort of field-marriage or wild marriage with the
women of Lille. Many of the female inhabitants maintained, over
a period of many years, intimate relations with German soldiers.
These relations led to the well-known result — the constant strug-
gle of the German military leaders against venereal disease seemed
doomed to failure. These women, among whom were many be-
longing to the better classes, disseminated their diseases in large
numbers and became the chief focus for its spread. Despite the
sharp separation of the city of Lille from the nearby Roubais and
Tourcoing, there were numerous cases in which frivolous women
came to Lille to have sexual relations. These abuses could only be
handled when, as a result of continuous and urgent requests by
German physicians, the military police of Lille exercised a sharp
watch over all hotels, estaminets (a word of French derivation
borrowed from Spain and designating a cabaret which provides
harlots), inns, secret quarters, boarding houses, rooms for hire, etc.
Those women who were caught having sexual relations in these
places were immediately brought before the military physician,
as were also those women who were accused by various soldiers
as having been the source of their infection. On the basis of the

156

PROSTITUTION BEHIND THE LINES 157

military physician's examination, the military police either assigned
the woman to control by the military authorities or to the hospital.
The reader who is interested in the elaborate system of regulations
and precautions by which sexual relations were guarded at Lille is
referred to the interesting book by Dr. Herms, entitled Lille ver-
gewaltigt?

The same condition was true of other cities, as, for example,
Douai. This city had a very large number of estaminets and a large
number of frivolous women for whom many of the sex hungry
German soldiers were very fortunate windfalls. It was interesting
to note how elderly French women fairly threw themselves upon
the necks of the very young Germans. As a result there was a
veritable epidemic of gonorrhea. The worst of the estaminets, those
in which microscopic examination had revealed that everyone was
diseased, were dissolved. It was determined somewhat later to erect
new puffs under German control. Every day the women were
examined, but withal venereal diseases flourished.

Conditions in Belgium were not much different. In this connec-
tion it is interesting to observe how German soldiers reacted at the
beginning of the occupation to the very derogatory reports con-
cerning sex conditions in Belgium. In the diary of a fallen soldier
named Franz Schmiedt, which was found by Allied troops and
used by them in the interests of their anti-German propaganda,
there occur the following remarkable lines: "The whole city that
we occupied is empty and destroyed. The houses that haven't been
burnt down are vacant. All the inhabitants have fled save a few
women who have remained behind. Prostitution is extremely com-
mon. Brother and sister live as man and wife, and, in addition,
women go in for all kinds of prostitution."

From an essay by Alex von Frankenburg, entitled Brussels as
Love Station, we learn that the love life of Brussels bore abundant
fruit as a consequence of the Code Napoleon under which it
probably still lived. That city boasted a famous pimp and bully
called Macro, one of the leading dancers at the Gaiety, for whom
many women sold their bodies to Germans. And no wonder, for
the lower classes in the city were very miserable. Begging on the
streets continually increased. This explains why prostitution grew
so enormously. Aside from the numerous cocottes of an earlier
day, of whom the better class had fled to London or Paris, the
great majority of these jemmes entretenues were girls whose cava-
liers had gone into service or skipped, so that the poor creatures,

158 THE SEXUAL HISTORY OF THE WORLD WAR

unable to earn a penny, saw themselves compelled to sell their
bodies to the hated Germans. Thus the bars, cinemas, cafes, etc.,
were overrun by girls; and by noon the merry chase after the man
was on, only in a more discreet way than among the Germans.
But after the closing of the cafes at eleven o'clock, a great stream
of girls poured out into the streets and accosted soldiers and
civilians alike with the greatest freedom. The sanitary control of
the Belgium authorities, which at the start was loose enough, soon
broke down completely so that in the Belgian capital the alleged
number of 150 girls were under police supervision.

All sorts of prophylactic measures were adopted here more for
the soldiers, who were tarrying there for a brief while, than for
those garrisoned there. Warnings and actual instructions, both
orally and through the distribution and conspicuous placing of
posters as well as free distribution of prophylactic devices at sani-
tary headquarters and free injections were also administered. At
this center they had, in addition, a very large stock of Viro which
was also distributed free. Inasmuch as the soldiers who had refused
to submit to these treatments were punished, the number of diseased
soldiers was rather small. The first thing that German soldiers saw
when they arrived at Brussels was a large sign warning them
against the hazards to health common in that town and urging
them to consult the sanitary orderlies who were posted at these
halting-stations.

Furthermore, Brussels saw some activity of a social-hygienic
sort which was headed by the Red Cross. The women who be-
longed to this organization had to visit questionable taverns, un-
cover dives and to take under their protection corrupt children of
evil parents.

Like Brussels, Antwerp, Ghent and Liittich were known as
breeding places of prostitution even before the war. Naturally
conditions grew very much worse during the war when masses of
soldiers overran the towns, their bodies bursting with lusts accu-
mulated over months, and their purses bulging with the pay they
had accumulated in the trenches. Frequently these soldiers would
pay between twenty to fifty marks for a night.

However, the most horrible aspect of this whole affair was the
prostitution of children. One could observe little girls of twelve
and fourteen garishly painted despite their rags, accosting soldiers
and saying, "Monsieur, pour une livre de pain?" For a pound of
sugar mothers offered their children, emphasizing their virginity;

PROSTITUTION BEHIND THE LINES 159

and little boys and girls of eight would tug at the soldier's coat-
tails to drag him to their sister, while making the symbolic gesture
of sexual intercourse (the thumb between two fingers, while re-
peating a monosyllabic vulgarism).

Conditions in the country were somewhat more humane for
here the soldier might actually take the place of the paterfamilias
who was fighting at the front or had perhaps died in battle. In
this way the soldier who had entered into intimate relations with
some woman of the household might literally grow to be regarded
as the vader van't huis; and the children who sprang from this
union are even today called duitschmaneke.

As far as the middle class is concerned, German officers were
welcomed in many distinguished Belgian homes and found con-
siderable eclat among Belgian girls and women. Indeed there is
even a story of a duel fought by two temperamental Flemish
women over a German lover. A case is known where one girl
called her rival by the honorific epithet of German whore and had
to answer to the court for it; despite the fact that she was able to
establish the truth of her accusation, she was sentenced to pay a
considerable sum of money in view of the fact that her own linen
was considerably soiled.

As we have already mentioned, sex relations assumed the most
friendly aspect in Flanders where the inhabitants of the occupied
areas were more or less sympathetic to the German troops. At
least it was asserted that the two groups, descended from a common
stock, understood each other. (One need only remember the
activistic movement in Flanders, and the Flemish university and
the German-Flemish societies at Dusseldorf and Berlin.) It was a
matter of proven fact that numerous tender love relations blos-
somed forth between Flemish girls and German soldiers, particu-
larly between ladies of good society and German officers. But these
relationships must not be overestimated inasmuch as in nearly
every case the women were driven to this by their desperate cir-
cumstances; and hence their amorous relations with the German
soldiers must be regarded as being virtually a gesture of desperation
whereby an unfortunate woman sold her body to keep herself and
her family from dying of hunger.

Wandt has revealed to us, without any trace of romanticism,
the connection between the misery induced by the war and the
clandestine prostitution that raged in Belgium. Ghent, which for
more than four years was the most important center of operations,

i6o THE SEXUAL HISTORY OF THE WORLD WAR

offered the richest material for the study of the limitless misery
which the madness of war had brought upon millions of women
and girls. More than four-fifths of the occasional prostitutes whom
the police had under their control were married women and mothers
of from three to eight children. Their husbands gone either to the
front or captivity, or dead, they were driven into the arms of
the enemy soldiers, not by any pleasure in vice but by the cry of
their children for bread. As for the unmarried occasional prostitutes,
they were recruited almost exclusively from jobless servants, fac-
tory girls and seamstresses. The more factories and business estab-
lishments were shut down in Ghent, the greater the number of
unemployed grew, the more did the mass of occasional prostitutes
increase. Into the place of the unemployed husband or father now
stepped the mother or daughter, or both, who supported the
family by selling their bodies.

The same situation was found on the Eastern front. Viktor
Jungfer has reported that there were a large number of unmarried
women in the town they occupied, whose misery was intense. No
wonder then that they sought to establish relationships with what-
ever troops were occupying the town. They washed the soldiers'
linen and darned their socks, receiving in return victuals. The
number of women who added to the above list of tasks the sale
of their love was continually on the increase. Moreover, young
country girls were at this time attracted to the city where an
easier and less toil-ridden life seemed to wait for them. This sort
of prostitution was regarded by the soldiers as being something
so natural that they regarded it as quite de rigueur to use every
opportunity so offered. As a result very few of the married men
remained faithful to their wives and those who did had to suffer the
mockery of their comrades. In many cases the men quite forgot that
they had a wife and children at home and even neglected them for
long intervals so that the company commanders would receive the
most pitiful letters from the forgotten wives inquiring if their
husbands were still alive.

In central and southern Poland, the women and girls of the
working class, and to some extent of the middle class as well,
participated in vast numbers in prostitution of the lowest sort.
Lodz and Lowicz were breeding places of this evil. The summer of
191 5 is assumed to have been the beginning of the epidemic of
venereal diseases which assumed tremendous proportions later on.
Nor did Warsaw, after its capture, remain behind the industrial

PROSTITUTION BEHIND THE LINES 161

centers just mentioned. As one arrived at the depot there, one ran
a veritable gauntlet of prostitutes. And even smaller places like
Ostrow or Wolkowiesk offered numerous invitations to venal love
which constituted grave dangers to the health of the army. In
northern Poland this type of prostitution decreased, but other
varieties flourished instead. But it must never be forgotten that,
especially in the early days of the occupation, it was hunger that
produced these conditions. That these extremely hazardous phe-
nomena of venal love later decreased in scope or intensity was not
attributable to any improvement in morals but to the rigid efforts
and control put forth by the German authorities. It was only then
that a true picture could really be obtained of the widespread
ramifications of prostitution.

But as a result of intercourse with unsupervised private women,
venereal diseases assumed terrifying proportions along the Eastern
front. This may be gathered from a whole series of measures issued
against luetic women who had intercourse with soldiers. On June
22, 1915, the German authorities issued an edict governing that
portion of Poland left of the Weichsel, warning all women that a
prison sentence of between two months and a whole year would be
imposed on any one who, knowing that she had a venereal disease,
would, despite this fact, cohabit with soldiers.

The remarkable thing about this ordinance was that the aware-
ness that one had a venereal disease was sufficient to expose one to
punishment and that the infection of the woman's visitor was not
even necessary. Naturally it was a very difficult matter to prove
that these women were aware of their condition. An improvement
over the original formulation of this ordinance was the subsequent
provision that in the future there would be no need for an accusa-
tion to be filed by an infected man, but that the military authorities
themselves could and would bring suit. A similar decree was issued
in the division of Gaede in Alsace during the spring of 19 16 by the
terms of which men and women who had extra-marital intercourse,
although they knew or could assume that they were venereally
diseased, were punishable by a year's imprisonment, or in milder
circumstances, by arrest or by fine up to 1500 marks.

As far as the individual cities of the eastern sector are concerned,
we learn that in Lemburg conditions were very bad, especially
after the invasion of the Russians, for the incidence of venereal
diseases among these troops was terrifically high. Ever since 1848,
when the Russian army had brought it thither, there had been a

1 62 THE SEXUAL HISTORY OF THE WORLD WAR

A French Cartoon Representing the Popularity or American Soldiers

in Paris

veritable epidemic of lues in Galicia which had remained active
even at the outbreak of the war. Thus in 1913 there were ten
thousand venereal patients in the Galician hospitals, and the total
number of the unhospitalized sufferers from these ailments was
estimated at over a quarter of a million at least. We have already
mentioned that in 191 6, 1340 women were brought to the hospitals
by the police as against one hundred in peace times. In Lodz and
Warsaw the German authorities had to install a vice-squad and
institute bi-weekly examinations. Of the 145 women who were to
be found in the Alexanderspital at Lodz in June, 191 5, no less than
113 were venereally diseased prostitutes. In Warsaw at the end of
I9I7! 557 out °f 1011 prostitutes were infected.

It is well known that in Wilna a military post had to be stationed
before the soldiers' home to keep the strumpets away, for they
would continually be anoying and seducing the soldiers. There
were an extraordinary number of these creatures in Wilna and

PROSTITUTION BEHIND THE LINES 163

most of them were infected as a result of the horribly unsanitary
conditions which had existed during the Russian period. Even
those that were not yet diseased and had to present themselves for
examination twice every week, were by no means without danger
to the soldier, for in between examinations they could become
infected and wreak their havoc.

The same conditions obtained on the Southern line of battle
with the possible exception of Serbia where the native women
regarded the invaders with unconcealed hatred.

Concerning Pirizrin in Macedonia, we learn that in the midst of
the city there was a large hotel. The proprietor of this institution
was very hospitable to the officers of the Austro-Hungarian army
who had come hither from Northern Albania to recuperate, and
among the other comforts he provided, women were also included.
The host would ask the guest of what nationality the lady was to
be and as soon as he got his answer he went out in search of the
desired woman. In a few moments he would return from his hunt
in the city with whatever sort of lady had been requested. Most
of these purchasable females had lived in the vicinity before the
war and among them there were a few French women.

When officers would parade through the streets of this town
they would be surrounded by street gamins who would call out,
Ima zena and if the officers followed these youngsters they would
come to a house where they would be received in the utmost
secrecy by a little old Turkish woman. The little old mother would
lead them into a room, set some black coffee before them and
summon the two or three Turkish girls who were the professional
inmates of the little house. The officers of the monarchy would
invariably be pleased by one thing: that these girls would be clean
shaven from head to foot.

In the town of Uskub, the sight most worth seeing was the
gypsy quarter with its squalid lime huts. In the evening a fire
would be burning in front of each of these houses and crouching
around it the gypsy women. Whenever a soldier passed, the girls,
who were all between fourteen and sixteen, arose and began to
dance with obtrusive ambulations of the hips in order to draw
attention to their physical charms. Somehow the latter would con-
clude his transaction with the gypsies and soon found himself
within the hut. Before the love act itself the soldiers were treated
to another dance spectacle purveyed by four absolutely naked
girls. It was notorious that all the gypsy girls were, without

1 64 THE SEXUAL HISTORY OF THE WORLD WAR

exception, luetic; and many of the German soldiers must have be-
come infected by them.

Concerning clandestine prostitution in that portion of Macedonia
which was occupied by the Bulgarians, we have considerable
information from the pen of Dr. B. Beron of Sofia. According to
the testimony of the physicians who had lived there ever since the
Turkish times, prostitution was reglemented under the regime of
the Turks and Serbs. Under the Serbian government prostitution
was very widespread; whereas under the Turks the city possessed
fifteen brothels whose number gradually diminished so that at the
time the Bulgarian occupation there were only two which soon
had to quit their activity. However, aside from the brothels, there
remained numerous houses and inns which served the cause of
prostitution in one way or another. The number of whores could
not be determined therefore but it was estimated that they ran into
several hundred. It is quite certain that their number was consider-
able, what with the low moral condition of the Serbs and the eco-
nomic distress. After the Bulgarian occupation there were no
brothels, but all sorts of private houses, hotels, cafes, etc. In addi-
tion the whole gypsy quarter served as a haven of venal love. In
Skopie there were numerous coffee houses which were actually
brothels. These coffee houses and saloons generally consisted of
one room which was furnished like a little tavern, but overhead, on
the first floor, there were a few rooms occupied by several prosti-
tutes, generally not more than three. These women sought their
clients among the patrons of the floor below for which they paid
their host a certain percentage. In all of these quarters one could
find Bulgarian and German soldiers. It need not be said that all the
houses of the gypsies were dens of vice. Generally the man did not
work and lived off the prostitution of his wife and daughters.
When men visitors would come he not only remained home with-
out any shame or discomfort, but would actually lead the men
customers into the chamber of his wife or daughters. It was an old
established custom of the gypsy women to prostitute themselves
for their families and they found nothing shameful at all in it. :

The numerous instances that we have cited are sufficient to give
us a very clear picture concerning the true nature of prostitution
in the war sector. They show us without any question of doubt
that the enormous spread of private prostitution in the various
areas of operation as well as in the halting-stations were attributed
even by the participants in the war themselves as due to economic

PROSTITUTION BEHIND THE LINES 165

necessity. Concerning the tremendous influence of the economic
motif in driving myriads of women to sell their bodies, not even
the most touching love stories from Flanders or Galicia can delude
us. It is true that the institution of field brides was known every-
where, but only a tiny percentage of these relationships can be
attributed to true feelings of love. In the vast majority of cases.,
these relationships were entered into by the woman because she
was driven by the indescribable misery and suffering that reigned
in the occupied area. Neither Belgium nor Northern France, and
least of all, the Eastern sector, were able to maintain their produc-
tion after the occupation, certainly not enough to meet the vast
number of new consumers, especially since many of the domestic
workers had fled. As a matter of fact, even in peace times Belgium
was dependent on imports of foodstuffs. Hence there is nothing
strange in the fact that in all the reports concerning amorous rela-
tionships between members of the army of occupation and native
women, insofar as these reports are not disguised in false senti-
mentality and decked out to establish the internationalism of love,
the economic question stands at the very center. The reports of an
hour of love, given in return for an artillery bread, are absolutely
unvarnished truth ; all else is, in the majority of cases, mere decora-
tion. There is ample ground for the concluding quartrain of a song
that was very popular among Flemish prostitutes:

Wir sind von flam'schen Blut,

die Deutschen f gut;

fur ein Kommissbrot und einen Franc,
f wir stundenlang.

The same thing holds true of Northern France and, it may sur-
prise us to learn, also in those portions of the area of occupation
which were not occupied by Germans. Here, too, the Four Horse-
men of the Apocalypse tore over all the fertile fields stamping out
all life; and here, too, necessity drove the French women, who had
been robbed of their husbands, to sell their bodies. Graves has
informed us in his novel how in the French province he and his
comrades were greeted by a whole group of youngsters, all of
whom, tugging at the officers' coats, begged them to come to their
sisters who were pretty and cheap. The same conditions were true
on both sides. Henel, for example, has left us some very typical
pictures of how officers of the Austrian and German army were
received in Galicia. And when our well-known Perhobstler finally

1 66 THE SEXUAL HISTORY OF THE WORLD WAR

got to the Eastern battlefield in Vossa in the Carpathian moun-
tains he reported that the town was full of women, and girls who
looked like women because they all had children. For a few ciga-
rettes one could sleep with a woman or a girl. The negotiations
were carried on by signs as it was impossible to talk with them, all
the girls being Ruthenians. These women lived like widows. They
never received letters from their husbands since the latter couldn't
write and they couldn't read. No men were ever permitted to return
home to Vossa for furlough, for on several previous occasions it
had been found impossible to recover them.

There is no need to bring any further instances to establish this
point. We have done enough to prevent our making any fallacious
conclusions concerning the true nature of the love relationship in
the war sector between the soldiers and the women of the native
population. Let us leave to a cheap and dizzy dabbling in emotion
all the gush about love which is stronger than national differences.
The love episodes of the halting-station have nothing to do with
this faith, creditable as it may be in itself. In these cases it was
always a question of bare prostitution due to elementary necessity
and only in rare cases was it a question of sex hunger which drove
a certain number of temperamental women to let themselves in for
an amorous escapade with whatever men were at hand — which
happened to be the troops of the army of occupation. Those cases
in which there was any question at all of truly humane attraction
were exceedingly few.

Clandestine prostitution was increased by the institution of civil
workers' battalions to which we shall return in the following chap-
ter. The women of Belgium and Northern France who were drafted
for compulsory work were exposed to the advances of the soldiers.
We may assume that in addition to being compelled to work
twelve hours a day, a great many of these women were also forced
into prostitution — but there is no proof of this matter. However,
a note of the French government, concerning the drafting of
their women into these compulsory work battalions, complained
that at night the women were exposed to the advances of German
soldiers and that the girls were quartered with men whereby im-
morality naturally had to be rife. Perhobstler has described one
experience with a girl from such a work battalion.

But the largest contribution of these compulsory work battalions
to the spread of prostitution lay in the fact that the supporter of
the family was dragged away for this enforced labor and that,

PROSTITUTION BEHIND THE LINES 167

therefore, the mother who remained home alone and the daughter,
who was unprepared for any sort of work, had no other way of
helping themselves than by prostitution. The German soldiers used
to wonder concerning the tremendous masses of women and girls
who offered themselves as prostitutes, but they never considered
with what systematic cruelty these unfortunates had been handed
over to shame by militarism; and that these pitiable creatures,
whom the long war had robbed of every possibility of earning a
penny, had literally no choice if they did not choose to die of
hunger.

From the foregoing account it is clear that the real breeding
place of prostitution in the West was the notorious estaminet. The
vast number of these institutions is also attributable to the eco-
nomic misery by which the native population, in the absence of
normal production, sought to make ends meet by catering to the
soldiers who were still comparatively able to buy things. This was
true on both sides, the only difference being that the estaminets in
the allied territory enjoyed more freedom. Of course one danger
always hovered over the heads of all these taverns, namely, that of
closure by the authorities. It is clear that the hostesses of these
establishments could not live merely from the sale of their prod-
ucts and that, therefore, they had to practice prostitution with the
majority of their clientele. Inasmuch as the young men, who had
formerly been the most frequent and most welcome guests at these
establishments were now gone to the wars, and inasmuch as the
elder natives who remained behind were virtually penniless, the
German troops were now the best customers. But the common
German soldier who came in from the field and had already been
separated for too long a time from his mamma was not content
with a large pint of beer or a warm pot of coffee, but wanted
something warmer for his heart and spirit. These soldiers honored
the estaminets with their presence primarily because they wanted a
hearty hostess or a pretty daughter to present them with their food
and drink. With these friendly females at their side or on their
lap they felt very much better. In the village of Aisne near Ghent
there was one estaminet which was always full to overflowing.
The proprietor had seven daughters of whom the youngest, though
only fourteen, was not far behind her six sisters in coquetry. The
German soldiers always felt very comfortable in the homelike
atmosphere of this simple, low-ceilinged, smoke-filled room, and
called this estaminet by the picturesque and telling name of At the

1 68 THE SEXUAL HISTORY OF THE WORLD WAR

Fourteen Cheeks. This tavern was undoubtedly the most popular
one in the whole Ghent sector.

Early in 191 6 most of these establishments received their death
blow. The chief of the German staff at Thielt issued a decree pro-
hibiting all German soldiers from visiting Belgian inns and esta-
minets and threatening all Belgian hosts, who sold food and drink
to German soldiers, with immediate closure of the business and
considerable punishment, including a money fine as well as im-
prisonment. By this order ten thousand Flemish saloons and esta-
minets were closed. The sign Prohibited to German Soldiers that
was set on their establishments robbed these folk of their only source
of income and caused their ruin. Only a few establishments, whose
owners, generally females, or daughters had intimate relationships
with the police officials of the district, were exempt from the
general prohibition and set apart from the others by a special sign
which read, Only for German Soldiers. The prohibition seems the
less comprehensible to us inasmuch as it was introduced a year
and a half after the German soldiers had been in Flanders and
were already at home everywhere. Its purpose was said to have
been the prevention of espionage; but the effect that it actually
had was to rob the Germans of the friendship of the numerous
estaminet owners and turn these ruined people into bitter enemies
of their despoilers. Even if the soldiers who were toying with the
wives and daughters of the innkeepers would have wished to impart
military secrets, they were unable to do so because of the utter
darkness in which they were kept by the Ludendorff system of lies.
Indeed any Belgian cocotte in whose lap a German officer had
played, knew more about the purposes of the German military
campaign than any battalion leader in the trenches. Another motive
for the shutting down of the estaminets was to eliminate one of the
breeding places of venereal diseases, but in this case also it was a
fight against windmills. The wives and daughters of these tavern
keepers, who until the shutting down of their little business had
prostituted themselves occasionally, now had to devote themselves
entirely to prostitution in order to keep themselves and their
family. So they walked the streets and sex intercourse would take
place somewhere in the open where there would be no opportunity
for immediate disinfection. In this way the opposite effect was
achieved. The statistics of the military surgeons in the halting-
stations showed clearly that the high figures of venereal diseases

PROSTITUTION BEHIND THE LINES 169

which the soldiers had got in Flanders did not diminish after the
estaminets were shut down, but rather increased tremendously.

One of the estaminets in Ghent which was permitted to con-
tinue its business after 19 16 was the Cafe Leonidas. Wandt has
characterized this place as the openest woman market in Ghent.
It belonged to a Greek who had given it its exotic name. Inasmuch
as it was situated in the cellar it was scarcely visible from the
street. As one entered one found oneself in a large and luxuriously
appointed hall where there were all sorts of delicacies for those
officers who were able to pay and all sorts of beverages, from real
German beer to the prohibited absinthe, and above all, women.
The most beautiful and most expensive strumpets of the whole city
made daily rendezvous at this place which was preferred by the
officers of the station. The commander of the district had become
a little bit disturbed by the undisguised love traffic carried on here,
and so, to demonstrate the extent of his morality, he ordered that
in the future men and women should sit separately there. How-
ever, not very much was gained for morality in this way, for as
soon as an officer had selected a girl, he sent her a little note by the
aid of a cunning young page and nothing would stand in the way
of the copulation aside from an engagement about the price. If they
wished they would not even have to go out of the building, for the
house, in the cellar of which the Leonidas Cafe was situated, was
appointed in its upper stories as a maison de rendezvous.

On the Eastern front, tea-houses took the place of the estaminets,
but they provided the same attractions. Many soldiers have asserted
that these establishments reminded them of Japanese tea-houses.
Here, too, the military officials endeavored to limit the number
of these amorous establishments, but without avail, for once the
vice had developed it continued in the form of clandestine pros-
titution. The longer the war lasted and the more acute the economic
distress became, the more it developed upon women and girls to
earn something, and there was only one form of earning possible
to them. Girls prostituted themselves for a whole day for a piece
of bread. One sister taught another to engage in this nefarious
occupation. Mothers of children were driven, by the most painful
necessity, to besmirch themselves. Women who were freezing gave
their bodies over to passion for clothes and shoes. Washerwomen
earned so little that they had to give their bodies for a piece
of soap.

Here and there these inns possibly owed their existence to other

170 THE SEXUAL HISTORY OF THE WORLD WAR

causes. Thus there is a story extant concerning the general staff of
one division who had a number of pretty girls sent them from
home. These they set up at a little town about an hour's distance
from their scene of operation and supported by common contribu-
tion. In order to give a name to this place, they fitted up a little
coffee shop for these girls so as to preclude any evil construction
of the whole affair. Hither the officers came to recuperate after a
day's work, but a number of lieutenants and ensigns who were
fighting at the front got wind of this and were able to arrange
matters in such a way that they very frequently were entrusted
with official business to the division commander. On such occasions
they never failed to make a little excursion to the fair coffee pur-
veyors who did not find their unofficial guests at all unpleasant, not
to speak of the fact that this brought them additional income. This
secret was carefully guarded and to this very day the original
entrepreneurs do not know that cuckoo's eggs were laid in their
nest. We recall that it was Heine who said that lieutenants and
ensigns are the cleverest fellows.

To sum up: It was not those occasional humane relationships
which grew up between the conquered and the oppressed popula-
tion of the occupied territories, between the liberators and the
women of the allied states, it was not tender war idylls that we can
regard as the creation of war. No. Rather is it misery, hunger and
prostitution which we must regard as the inevitable and ineluctable
harvest. The hundreds of thousands of women in the halting-
stations who earned daily bread for themselves and their family
by the sale of their bodies were certainly, in the vast majority of
instances, not born prostitutes — a theory which bourgeois society
has invented in its own defense. They were prostituted by the
greatest pander in the world, namely — war, and they were ruined
in body and soul. Their names are not found on any casualty list
and yet they are not the least lamentable victims of the war.

Chapter 10

LUST IN THE CONQUERED AREAS

The Halting-Station Swine vs. the Battlefront Swine — Women of the
Occupied Areas and Their Conquerors — Belgium Under German Occupa-
tion— The Land of Espionage — Its Underground Press — Conquest: A sex-
ual Stimulant — Brutalities Against Conquered Population — Notorious Civil
Work Battalions — Deportation of Young Girls — Other Brutalities — Patron-
izing "Home Industry" — Competition Between German and Belgium
Prostitutes — Halting-Station Girls — Sexual Envy of Common Soldiers —
Officers' "Mattresses" — Female Auxiliaries of Austrian Army — Trieste, the
Perfect Slave Market — Daughters for Sale — Female Competition for
Officers — Cruelties in Women's Hospitals — The Infamous Hospital at
Lousberg — Compulsory Hospitalization — The Yellow Pass-Cards — The
"Whore-Ledger" — Tribadism of Sex-Starved Women — A Hospital Hell —
Erotic Episodes in the Halting-Stations

THE etape or halting-station was the true breeding place of war
prostitution, war immorality and venereal diseases. In the hinter-
land, Belgium, Northern France, the occupied portions of Serbia,
Montenegro and the Eastern sector were regarded as veritable
Babylons. Fantastic and exaggerated stories were circulated con-
cerning the potency of the officers assigned to duty behind the
lines. In these tales, of course, sexual envy played a considerable
role. Whereas both at the front and back at home there raged the
most extreme misery, which naturally included an agonizing sex
hunger, the etape or halting-station, the area behind the actual
scene of operations, was regarded as a blessed land. The fortunate
inhabitants of this district, that is, those who bore epaulettes or
gold-embroidered collars, were not only removed from all economic
worries, but were even provided with unlimited opportunity for
sexual indulgence. The view came to be held that there was a
fundamental difference between the common soldier who did his
duty honorably, filled up the trenches and frequently left his
corpse there, and the fortunate individuals who could lead their
riotous lives in the district behind the battle area. But this notion
leaves out of consideration the fact that it was only a matter of
luck and influence what post one occupied, whether one exposed
one's life to danger or was able to enjoy a most irresponsible life
behind the lines. There was no qualitative distinction between the
"stallion behind the lines" and the "swine on the battle-front." The
transition from one category to the other was not impossible, and
one's character was formed in accordance with the circumstances
one had to live under. Many popular songs were current among the

171

172 THE SEXUAL HISTORY OF THE WORLD WAR

soldiers which gave poignant expression to the difference between
the two forms of life, the luxurious sex-drenched life of the officers
and the miserable dog's existence of the common soldier. We all
remember the song so popular among the American soldiers — if
one wanted to find generals one would have to go to Paris for them.

Just what did the officers do in these stations far removed from
the battle area? Viktor Jungfer has left us very explicit information
on this score in his novel, Das Gesicht der Etappe. When the
officers were through with their very easy duties they turned to all
sorts of pleasures — drink, games of various sorts, women of course,
and general good fellowship. These men lost all sense of obligation
and, what is more, they became completely estranged from home
and thoughts of their domestic life. Similarly Professor Baum-
garten has expressed the opinion that the enforced idleness in the
halting-station and the comfortable life led to sexual excesses.

Belgium was the land in which this type of life brought forth
its most poisonous fruits. For four years Belgium lived, literally,
behind barbed wire, for all along the Dutch border there were
barbed wire fences carrying a high electrical current to prevent
desertions of Belgians who were fit for military service. In general,
the administration of Belgium by the German military occupants
was a masterpiece of German military organization and the re-
sistance which this incarcerated people offered to the oppression
of their enemies, constitutes a fantastically heroic episode of the
twentieth century. But, despite the barbed wire and other difficul-
ties, many men succeeded in escaping from Belgium; and even at
the time of the Armistice in 1918, five hundred thousand Belgians,
most of them men, were said to have been outside their country.
Now this scarcity of men, comparable to that of Northern France,
had very drastic consequences in the sexual relations of the female
population of Belgium which had never been famous for a too
prudish sexual morality.

The people were very hostile to the Germans, especially in the
Walloon district. In no other land and at no other time in history
was espionage by women so widespread. The hatred toward the
German invaders was fanned by a secret underground press, the
story of which constitutes one of the most thrilling chapters of the
World War. The most famous of these secret newspapers, the
Libre Belgique, began to appear in February, 191 5, and continued
to the end of the war. It sounds almost incredible that in a land
occupied by a tremendous army and guarded with remarkable

LUST IN THE CONQUERED AREAS 173

diligence and intensity, where the majority of the population had
to report for inspection at least once a week, where personal free-
dom was thoroughly suppressed, that, despite all these hindrances,
this rabidly anti-German paper should continue to appear for four
full years. Every number of this sheet was filed in the office of the
German authorities. Every word which appeared in this paper, and
in the others, which soon emulated its example, constituted high
treason punishable by death. Many readers of these papers were
arrested and placed in concentration camps and a few of the
contributors were even laid hold of. But, despite the most furious
oppression, the Germans failed to silence the underground press.

It can scarcely be denied, therefore, that the story circulated in
Germany, concerning the love-relations between German soldiers
and women of a population whose hatred of Germans was for many
years nourished in the way just indicated, was to a large extent
fiction. The relations that did exist were between officers and
Belgian women who were either members of the Belgian secret
service or prostitutes or such women as had been forced into pros-
titution by the ever-increasing pressure of economic distress.

This is not the place to write the history of the Belgian occupa-
tion. However, we might mention in passing a few of the horrible
acts committed by the Germans in connection with this unhappy
episode of their national history. So great was their fear of espion-
age that they resorted to ridiculous antics. What can one say, for
instance, of the German order prohibiting Belgians from crossing
a field in zigzag fashion under pain of being shot to death? And
indeed this was no idle threat. On September 9, 191 7, a certain
Wolff Dementi defended himself against the charge that the
Governor-General of Belgium led a regiment of terror. "Since
May first of that year," this worthy averred, "only nineteen Bel-
gians had been executed." It is well known also that the Austrian
army was guilty of such bloody excesses. Thus in June, 191 7, when
some question was raised in Parliament concerning the mass execu-
tions in Galicia, a certain representative named Heine called out,
"Far too few have as yet been hanged in Galicia"; and at that
time the number of the totally innocent victims of this sort of
military justice ran into the thousands. Finally Dr. Albert H. Fried
has preserved for us an opinion of Frank Wedekind who said that
the Germans would never be able to leave Belgium lest the world
get to know of all the atrocities they had perpetrated there.

It is not our concern here to seek the cause for these atrocities in

174 THE SEXUAL HISTORY OF THE WORLD WAR

any peculiarity of the German mentality. Perhaps such conditions
are the necessary consequences of every military occupation and
hence the infinite sufferings of the Belgian people were the inevi-
table outcome of war. But an awareness of what Belgium suffered
at the hands of the Germans leads us to have more than a little
doubt concerning the truth of reports relative to the tender rela-
tions subsisting between the Germans and Belgian women.

There seems to be good reason for supposing that the conscious-
ness of being conquerors acted as a mighty sexual stimulant upon
the Germans who were occupying Belgium during the World War.
Not only was the sexual drive of these men increased so that in
periods when there was a lull in the battle it came to abundant
expression, but there was also an increase in the feeling of mastery
and superiority which expressed itself in various brutalities against
the civil population. Thus we read of a certain lieutenant in Ghent
who, because of some slight discourtesy, would first thrash the
unfortunate native who had fallen into his hands and then compel
him to stand face to the wall and wait while further punishment
would be determined for him.

Perhaps the most shocking institution that was invented during
the occupation in Belgium was the creation of the notorious civil
work battalions. To this sad episode in the history of the Belgian
occupation, we shall devote a very brief consideration. This move
was initiated by the Germans because of the blockade and the
resultant economic crisis and the subsequent starvation in the occu-
pied Belgian districts. But whatever the real reasons, these measures
which were also used in Northern France, aroused universal horror
and were soon played up by the allied propaganda as one of the
inextinguishable disgraces of German warfare.

How was this army of workers formed? Search patrols of Ger-
man soldiers were sent out to examine every house and to select as
many members of each household as could be put to work, instruct-
ing the drafted ones to appear at a certain place and time with
necessary supplies, principally eating utensils. All persons capable
of work were eligible for this military campaign, provided that
they were not younger than fourteen nor older than fifty-five.
Women who had children younger than fourteen were not sup-
posed to be removed from their family.

We have a most moving account of one of these episodes that
took place in Lille:

"On the night of Good Friday the troops came to our district. It

LUST IN THE CONQUERED AREAS

175

was terrible. The officer passed slowly by and designated certain
persons of both sexes whom he ordered to report in a few minutes
—in no case more than an hour— at a certain place. Anton D. and
his sister, twenty-two years old, were led away. A younger sister,
not yet fourteen, was hardly spared. A grandmother, sick with
terror and pain, had to be given the sacrament. In another case,
neither a reverend old man nor two crippled people were able to
prevent the removal of their daughters who were their only sup-
port. During this torture the German beasts went through all sorts
of merry pranks. Thus, in the case of a certain lady, they asked
which of her two girls she would rather keep. When the mother
replied that she would rather the older one stayed, she was in-
formed that that was just the one they were going to take away.

. . The unfortunate ones were rounded up and then marched
through the town to the depot to be taken God only knows
where."

The professors of Lille protested against the deportation of
young girls and women and accused the German officers of definite
sadistic tendencies. German officers drank champagne while poor
women were dragged into exile before their eyes. In some cases,
women were transported in cattle-cars and were housed in miserable
hovels with straw sacks for beds. Later on, at their camps, they
were exposed to the offensive attention of soldiers and officers and
very frequently at night they had to run for refuge in their night-
shirt and bare feet. The agricultural labors that were assigned to
them were uncommonly hard. And all of them, without regard to
education, profession or rank, had to undergo examination by the
military police which was carried out with excessive brutality.

In the life of the halting-station officer, a more important role
than that of the women of the native population was played by
those women who were of their own nationality and had to come
thither to perform various subordinate services. This institution of
auxiliary service rendered by women was known in all lands. As
early as 19 14 France had various female operatives, principally
auto-drivers. In Germany also they became even more important
because, by their activity, they were able to release huge numbers
of men for actual service in the war. We have considerable data
concerning the life of these auxiliary operatives. The novel already
referred to above, Gesicht der Etappe, tells us that the prostitutes
of that particular district lost trade rapidly because of the fact that
the German soldiers were going with German girls who were serving

176 THE SEXUAL HISTORY OF THE WORLD WAR

as auxiliaries and were, so to speak, patronizing home industries.
Indeed it was not even necessary for the men to go to the women
since the latter freely came to them — a practice which was obviously
impossible for the native prostitutes. There was very strong com-
petition indeed between the native women and the female help
that had come down from home. Of course the aim of the whole
struggle was to snatch for oneself the officer whose pockets were
bulging with marks and in this struggle there was also an under-
tone of national feeling and even of moral sentiment as well. Thus,
the Belgian woman would hold her nose over the German auxiliary
personnel whom they called Mitrailleuses and concerning whose
morality they had a very low opinion indeed. The German girl,
on the other hand, thought of the whole Belgian people, which had
been conquered, as an inferior race. Incidentally, it might be re-
marked that the reputation of these female operatives was just as
bad at home as it was in the halting-station itself. Their relation-
ships with the officers were usually of an ephemeral sort; however,
with the non-commissioned ones they occasionally had more lasting
relations and some of these ended in marriage. Aside from such rare
cases the life of a girl in the station was little different from that
of a prostitute. In the novel Halting-Station Girl, by Martha
Babbillotte, we find the following statements regarding the social
stratification within this class of women in France:

"The married women who had their husbands with them with-
drew entirely into the circle of domestic tenderness permitted them
by the state, not without demonstrating a certain measure of
disrespect for the other types. After these came those women
who had a steady relationship with one man. These were the most
decent relatively. Every evening they went to their gentlemen or
were visited by them, and the jealousy of these gentry guarded the
morality of these girls more strictly than all the rules of ethics and
religion. These relationships usually ended with an official betrothal
and even marriage though the latter came long after the unofficial
one had been entered into.

"For the rest there were those girls, far too many of them, alas!
who were the actual prey of life in this milieu. Admittedly there
were some girls of good family among them, but, especially among
the newer ones, there were very many questionable females who
had gone through the high school of life in Lille or Brussels. For
them any man who wore epaulettes was immediately acceptable.

LUST IN THE CONQUERED AREAS 177

These girls had all sorts of relations in return for which they got
food and clothes.

"It is true that at every inspection careful note was taken of the
activities of every one of the station girls but no matter what
penalty she was threatened with, she made light of it because she
knew that her services were far too valuable to be dispensed with
for any moral consideration. It was virtually impossible to bring
these women to a better point of view so filled were they with
frivolity. It was they who created the evil reputation of the station
girl which traveled back home to Germany and was thereafter
applied to every girl who tarried there. This, of course, was not
entirely just. In every city there are girls who live in the same way
but they are accepted as a matter of course and, besides, in the
great city they do not stand out. Moreover, no one has time to
bother about them. But here in the sector they had a distinguished
position and every one of their movements was followed by thou-
sands of eyes glaring with envy and hatred. These were the women
who made the soldiers at the front so bitter, when, exhausted from
their ordeal in the trenches, they returned for a bit of rest and
recreation. It was they who led the French woman to form her
derogatory opinion of the German girl."

As a matter of fact, it was one of the most horrible conditions
of the war-stations that the officers resident there could indulge
every sex appetite whereas the common soldier who tarried there
for a brief while, on the way to or from the battlefield, would be
able to snatch some erotic pleasure only in the repulsive forms we
have already considered. The bitterness of these men was well
expressed by Perhobstler when he said, "We were 'battle-front
swine' and we became well aware of that fact when we came to the
station-city. We were placed in worse quarters than anybody who
lived in the city and were regarded with most unfriendly eyes by
the dandified officers who strutted about in brand new uniforms.
Our soldiers, and even officers, were dusty and dirty; and no one
of the station soldiers would even greet us properly. The. girls
were nearly all in the firm possession of the regular 'station stallions'
and any station soldier was more attractive to them than a battle-
front soldier. Thus in many things indeed, we became outsiders to
normal civil life and many of us bore the burden and the shame of
this even after the war."

Again and again this feeling came to clear expression in the
sexual envy of all men who had to tarry in the station for a little

178 THE SEXUAL HISTORY OF THE WORLD WAR

while. In the diary of one soldier we read that one day, when he
and a number of his associates were in the movies, several ladies
of the auxiliary service came in with a few officers and immediately
the whole gallery hissed out the words "Officers' mattresses."

Essentially the same conditions were true of the Austrian army.
A certain lieutenant, Pussl, expressed the opinion that the institu-
tion of female help at the front was devised by the chiefs of staff
in order to afford pleasure to the officers during the long years of
war. Most of the girls made no secret of their illegitimate relation-
ships, and practically all of them, office help, nurses and what-not,
had one or more admirers which was quite natural and pardonable.
Indeed, what young man to whom an opportunity was not only
offered but upon whom it was almost forced, would not take
advantage of it and celebrate the joys of Priapus!

The question of female help in the Austrian army has been
treated in an essay by S. Weyr which has the advantage of not
neglecting the social side of the problem. The year 191 6 had
ended gloomily for the Austrian army. The catastrophe of Luck,
the adventure of Asiago with its tremendous loss of men, and of
the battles of the Isonzo had decimated the Austrian forces which
were already using their reserves. In 191 7 this material was de-
pleted and all other materials began to run out. It was necessary to
find substitutes and supplies. The forty-four-year-olds and the
seventeen-year-olds were now called to the colors; the bread rations
were reduced to 140 grams, coffee-cards were introduced, door
knobs were confiscated, napkins and tablecloths were commandeered.
But the gravest need was for men. At this time Major Schubert
suggested the idea of a female military service which would take
the place of the older men in the military offices and thereby
release that much fighting power. Unfortunately the exact figures
on this subject are lacking, since at the end of the war all these
records were purloined by the notorious Gombos, now one of the
leaders of the Hungarian Fascists, but at that time a member
of the general staff. However, it is known that there were between
95,000 and 100,000 women engaged in this auxiliary service work.
At that time the condition of the population at home was horrible.
There was no food and no coal; all the places of amusement were
shut down, and through every street of Vienna there stalked the
grim specters of poverty and misery. When a proclamation was
issued at the end of January, 191 7, calling for female volunteers,
it aroused tremendous enthusiasm. To be sure, ever since the

LUST IN THE CONQUERED AREAS 179

beginning of the war, women had been employed in some of the
military offices and, what is more, the Red Cross nurses had already
offered themselves for service, for which they had won a somewhat
questionable reputation. But there had not yet been any oppor-
tunity for masses of women to enter military service. The institution
of the official female military functionary was something new.
Many women applied for this work because, first, they were assured
of good food and, secondly, of a considerable amount of money,
between a hundred and a hundred and sixty kronen a month. In
addition, many women were impelled by a conscious or unconscious
desire for adventure and a yearning for a vague romanticism.

What was the destiny of these female auxiliaries of the Austrian
army? They were sent out from Vienna to various places where
the war raged, including Trieste, Lemberg, Lublin, Belgrade or
Bucharest. For the most part nobody worried whether they arrived
at their destination or not. When and if they did arrive, they had
to ask their way about until they got to the office of the general
staff where, after a superficial investigation of their capacities and
training, they would be assigned to a certain job. In Trieste, there
was a perfect slave market for female auxiliaries. The latter would
all congregate in a large room where, seated on benches with their
baggage at their feet, they would wait for hours until a gentle-
man who needed female help would come and select the woman
who attracted him the most. Every man who came here knew that
the creature he took along with him was hopelessly in his power—
a condition of responsibility which transcends the capacities of
most men. In many cases the female auxiliaries were assigned to
military superiors who exploited their subordinate positions in a
sexual way. There were a few honorable officers who were different,
but it was a very rare individual who would see anything but a
female vessel in the woman that was put under his command. The
chief reason for the complete helplessness of the female auxiliaries
was due to the material dependence of the girl on the officer who,
with one stroke of the pen, could drive her back into the starving
city whence she had come. Also there was the whole psychological
situation of those women: a few girls among many men, all
strangers, and home and family life destroyed (here all gentlemen
are cavaliers and one consorts with officers, whereas at home one
would very likely have to be on a much lower level). Young girls
were brought into extremely difficult situations which even women
of strong characters would not be equal to. If men of fine stamina

i8o THE SEXUAL HISTORY OF THE WORLD WAR

were suddenly overcome, after they had gotten into their officer's
uniform, by megalomaniac ideas of the most absurd sort and, in
the wake of this military ideology, lost all reason, judgment and
character, is it surprising that young, inexperienced girls did not
stand the strain any better?

In the course of the year 19 17, there gradually grew up a
unique form of sexual relationship between the female auxiliaries
and the officers, a form that had not been known since the days of
the Thirty Years' War. The position of these female auxiliaries, in
the midst of thousands of sex-crazed men, resulted in remarkable
forms of relationships. At the end of 191 7 it was common for
officers who were serving at the front, instead of going home on
furlough, to journey to one of the larger sector stations where
there were greater opportunities for erotic indulgence than even
in the legendary Budapest. This phenomenon could be observed
in all the armies as the war wore on. Thus for the Western front,
Brussels became a sort of Capua, where the native prostitutes
offered very different attractions from any purveyed by the starving,
smaller cities of Germany.

As a result, enormous numbers of these women and girls fell a
prey to venereal disease. It was difficult to subject them to periodic
medical examination even when there was a responsible command-
ant. Furthermore, many of these girls had no idea of the true
nature of venereal diseases. When such a girl unfortunately got
syphilis she would not be looked upon by her associates in vice as
one who had been overtaken by ill fortune, but was treated by them
as a criminal. Her colleagues would curse, beat her, and run her
out. If the girl fell into the hands of the military sanitary author-
ities, she was driven into the venereal hospital at the point of a
bayonet. If she succeeded in avoiding this fate, she was shunned
by all as one afflicted with a plague. In her misery and lonesomeness
she became an ordinary prostitute.

In the year 1918, the few male divisions which had been released
for military service by the female auxiliaries had long been moulder-
ing in their graves. The latter institution had proved itself to be
useless, and in many classes of the population there was an intense
antipathy to it. Moreover, the best women and girls were no longer
willing to expose themselves to the evil reputation of this activity.
For this reason, female inspectors were appointed by the war
ministry, but even they acomplished nothing at all inasmuch as
practically all these inspectors were women of the aristocracy who

LUST IN THE CONQUERED AREAS 181

didn't have the slightest trace of social emotion. When these in-
spectors discovered venereal disease among the female auxiliaries,
they would immediately deprive the unfortunate sufferers of their
jobs, thus removing their economic security and driving them to
starvation and degradation. However, these inspectors would say
nothing about the officers responsible for the girl's infection. An-
other index of the heartlessness of these aristocratic supervisors
was seen in the rule that if a girl would, for any reason, be unable
to work for two months, she would lose her post.

In general, the authorities felt that this systematic prostitution
of the female auxiliaries was not a serious matter, inasmuch as
many of these ladies had been immoral before they came to the
service. This conception is characteristic of the war ideology which
sought to extenuate the criminality of war by antedating many of
its crimes to an earlier period. Exner has called attention to the
fact that when regulated prostitution decreased in Vienna during
the war it was, characteristically, attributed by the police to the
departure of a considerable number of women to the stations.
Nothing was easier than to attribute the immorality of the sector
girl to her own lack of moral resistance.

No one, however, can question that life in the halting-station
cost the vast majority of these women their health, and that they
constituted a large proportion of the venereally diseased. In his
grandiose drama of war entitled, The Last Days of Humanity, Karl
Krauss has left us a remarkable picture of these victims of the war,
victims who will rise up to accuse us to the end of time.

Between the native women, driven by their misery, to sell their
bodies and the station girls who were completely dependent eco-
nomically, the life of the officer assigned to this Cockayne duty
was spent pleasantly with few cares. There was continuous com-
petition for the price of his pleasure, between the women of the
land which served as the scene of his activity and those girls who
were rendering auxiliary service in the army. Both groups, how-
ever, were continually exposed to the danger of venereal infection
which would deprive them of their livelihood and place them in
the women's hospitals.

At this point we must say something about these characteristic
institutions of the station. The hospitals for women (the soldiers
called them "Machine Repair Shops") were established wherever
there were troops — in Belgium and France on the Western front,
and later on the Eastern front also. From the military and hygienic

1 82 THE SEXUAL HISTORY OF THE WORLD WAR

point of view, there is, of course, nothing to be said against these
institutions. But the manner in which they were administered made
them one of the horrors of war. To these institutions were driven
all women who had fallen into the hands of the German vice-
squad. All had to be examined, healthy women as well as diseased.

As far as the Eastern sector was concerned, directly after the
Germans entered Riga, to take one example, such a hospital was
established, and at least a quarter of the people, who were re-
quired to submit to the examination by the military surgeons, were
admitted to the hospital. The patients were given sewing, or vari-
ous chores in the house or in the field. Some made underwear and
socks from materials that had been left by the Russians. A similar
institution was started in Warsaw directly after the German occu-
pation. By March, 191 6, 2543 patients had been treated.

The same conditions existed in Northern France. In Lille, there
were four such hospitals where treatment was administered by
French physicians under German supervision. The ultimate author-
ity was in the hands of the German police physician who alone
could decide whether, from the medical point of view, a prostitute
should be admitted or discharged. Clandestine prostitutes who were
brought to the hospital for the second time were compelled to go
under control.

At Lousberg, in the district of Ghent, there was a famous hos-
pital for prostitutes. In June, 191 7, it suffered a nocturnal air
attack, during which the 800 patients broke away. It was only
with great difficulty that they were brought back. Wandt is our
authority for the statement that between 800 and 1500 women,
some of them with children, were hospitalized at Lousberg annually.
They were required to sew sand sacks for use in the trenches; in
return they were paid ten pennies a day.

This institution was one of the atrocities of the war, comparable
to the destruction of the Cathedral at Rheims or of the library of
Louvain, but worse since it wrought its hellish work in human
souls. Into this institution, established to cure women suffering
from venereal diseases, to prevent them from transmitting their
infections to German soldiers, there were driven not only such
women as were beyond further corruption, but also such as had
merely incurred suspicion. During the four years of German occu-
pation, thousands of women saw Lousberg who had no business
there at all. Yet these innocent women had to submit to the same
treatment as the vilest and most diseased. Whether they were

LUST IN THE CONQUERED AREAS

183

simple, decent working girls or women from the higher walks of
life, once the gates of Lousberg had shut behind them, they were
treated as outcasts of society. They had to sleep together in large
halls and listen to the foul bawdiness of former brothel inmates.
The latter did not hesitate to revenge themselves upon their more
respectable sisters for all the past criticism they had endured from
respectable women. Every day all the inmates had to mount the
gynecological chair to expose their private parts to the glance and
touch of the physicians and the numerous subordinate personnel.
What frightful havoc was wrought to the delicate sensibilities of
fine women in this institution! Many, upon their discharge, re-
ceived undeservedly the yellow pass-card which required them to
remain forever under the supervision of the police physicians; and
many carried with them a stigma which they had to bear for the
rest of their life and which, when their husbands returned from the
front, was responsible for more than a few bourgeois tragedies.
The careless denunciation of a malicious neighbor, the hatred of a
rejected lover, the pleasant titillation afforded some disdained
German officer by the exercise of his power, were frequently the
means whereby a thoroughly irreproachable woman was driven
into the jaws of the Moloch Lousberg. And even those women
who were discharged at the end of four weeks because they were
free from disease, or because there was no proof of the illicit inter-
course, even these women were singed by the poisonous vapors
which issued from the foulness of this hospital. The popular idiom
was not long in changing the name of this institution into Luesburg.
Anyone whose name had been brought into connection with this
institution had a stigma to bear for the rest of her life.

Just what went on in these hospitals for women in the enemy
territory? Full information on this subject can be gotten in the
novel French Women Without Sex by Eugen Ortner, a unique
work which contains, in an impressionistic style, the diary of a
German soldier (apparently identical with the author) who knows
a great deal concerning these matters because he was assigned as a
supervisor to one of these hospitals. This house was situated in one
of the towns of the French sector, probably La Valle. It was
organized at the end of 19 14 and tended by a volunteer medical
personnel; after 191 5 it came under military supervision at which
time the house was completely shut off from the outside world by
fences, trellises and shutters. Regular medical examinations were
introduced. Two German soldiers led the regiment, while a third

1 84 THE SEXUAL HISTORY OF THE WORLD WAR

assigned to the women various necessary chores, such as sweeping,
washing, chopping wood, etc. The inmates did all the work in the
institution, three of the inmates, who were gonorrheal, cooking
for the others. The German soldiers acted as lords and masters, sat
at prepared tables, always took precedence and insisted that they
be saluted. The inmates abeyed them and awarded them with
personal service. The order of the day was as follows: Morning-
washing at eight; housecleaning until nine; coffee; preparation for
the medical examinations which came at eleven; at two, rice or
bean soup, with 250 grams of bread; Sunday and Thursday after-
noons, coffee again; supper at seven, retiring at nine. The triumvir-
ate in charge exercised strict supervision, but every now and then
one of them fell in love with one of the patients who was well or
had already been cured. Thus love relations were enacted in the
very house where the physician appeared daily and where medicine
and injections were prepared to accelerate the healing process. The
French mayor paid the heating and other household expenses, while
foodstuffs were provided by the American relief forces. The equip-
ment was extremely poor. Before and after meals, prayers were
said. Record of the treatment was kept in a thin green notebook
called the whore-ledger. Every month a report was filed with the
German commandant, not only concerning the patients, but even
of young children whom their mothers had brought into the prison
with them.

The general rule was that before any woman could be released
she would have to show a negative reaction in ten tests — which
meant at least five weeks. If this series of ten showed any positive
reaction at all the patient knew that for the ensuing six months
there would be no release from her jail. The arden French women
suffered dreadfully from sex hunger. Many became dull and stupor-
ous, praying for hours in the chapel, obeying all orders in a semi-
waking lethargy. On other occasions, there would be a mania
reaction from this inertia during which the woman would hurl her-
self madly upon the ground, tear her hair, roll on her musty bed,
groan and howl. Weeks of quiet desperation would follow again,
until she was approached by one of the German soldiers.

These sex-famished women practiced tribadism occasionally. One
evening the supervisor saw a blue light gleaming on the second floor.
Since any illumination was prohibited, he went upstairs to investi-
gate, and saw the following: In a circle a mob of women all in their
night shirts or underthings were huddled. On a chair stood a light

LUST IN THE CONQUERED AREAS

which was concealed by a blue paper. Two naked girls, Chapsal
and impudent little Berte, were dancing an erotic pantomine in the
boldest way, Chapsal acting as the man and Berte as the woman.
The group hummed a melody and finally broke out into hoarse
cries when the two dancers embraced each other. There was kissing
and one of the audience put a red paper over the light which threw
a lurid reflection on the bare flesh when the real act began with
all its wildness. Chapsal's robust arms worked energetically. Her
hair fell upon her athletic shoulders and only her breasts betrayed
the fact that she was a woman. Berte had turned her head in my
direction. Merriment and mockery laughed out of her eyes and face;
but soon passion gripped her and contorted her features and she
gave herself completely, without realizing that it was only a woman
who was possessing her in complete and glorious fulfillment.

Early in the history of these institutions, attempts at flight were
not infrequent. Women broke out because of tedium or fear of
being sent to Germany, of yearning for their family, or of sex
hunger. After the military administration was introduced, fugitives
were rapidly caught, returned and punished; yet, in spite of every-
thing, the women continued to speak of flight and to sing a rather
naughty song that had arisen in the hospital in praise of flight. It is
interesting to linger a moment over one line that occurs in this
song, "Je ne suis pas malade." This conviction, that they were
being kept in these hospitals out of pure caprice or ill-will, was
shared by healthy and sick women alike. Said one, "Assuming that
we really are sick, why is the enemy interested in our recovery?"
This patient answered her own question by stating that the enemy
really wished to harm them. "They pencil us with iodine so that
we may become sterile. Pauvre France/"

Others again said, "Why this long treatment in order to do away
with the whites. Perhaps a few are really sick, but as for the others,
it is just a matter of German brutality and sadism. . . . This remark-
able sickness is unknown in France; and if anyone should ever
consider it of sufficient importance to regard it as a disease about
three or four weeks would suffice to cure it, not a whole year."

The manner in which most of these women were dragged into
the jail that went by the name of hospital was very simple indeed.
As soon as the authorities were informed about a relationship exist-
ing between a French woman and a German soldier they offered
this woman a choice between the correction house and a brothel.
Many times these women were denounced by the civil inhabitants

1 86 THE SEXUAL HISTORY OF THE WORLD WAR

of the place, but nearly everyone of these prisoners was poor; the
girls belonging to officers were never molested. This fact was very
clearly expressed in a popular ballad, that certain women were
never arrested because they slept with the higher-ups. Not infre-
quently, heartbreaking scenes were enacted when innocent girls
were hauled into these hospitals, pitiful victims of an unscrupulous
informer dressed in German uniform.

In these institutions, innocent girls learnt the craft of harlotry.
For most of the inmates of these lazarets were women who had
been torn out of a happy life, been brutalized for a few months,
and then cast into a miserable life. Hence these hospitals can well
be regarded as symbols of the shocking tragedies contained in the
sinks of vice that were called halting-stations. In them were incar-
cerated, behind nailed windows and bolted doors, the women of
the occupied land. Together with the auxiliary operatives and the
nurses of the sector hospital, they constituted the stock of female
flesh which was sold in the sex market of the sector. The officers,
with the appetites of harem lords, went from the arms of one into
the lap of another. In his case only was the hope realized that,
thanks to the war, all the bonds of bourgeois morality would be
broken. Millions bled their lives away or sank to the status of ani-
mals in the trenches, but the officer of the station enjoyed his life.
Moreover, the military authority saw to it that the wife of such
officers stationed here never came to visit her husband; only in the
Austrian army were officers permitted to have their wives with
them on the dangerous battlefront. The German officer assigned
to the halting-stations, therefore, had to have his amorous escapades
here or else would have been condemned to celibacy even as his
wife at home suffered from sex starvation.

Of course it was just a matter of luck that anyone was able to
spend all the years of the war in the sector. Any day one might be
sent to the front and changed from "station stallion" to "battle-
front swine." Hence this was all the more reason for giving full
play to one's appetites while such an indulgence was possible.

Infected station girls and nurses; natives, with faces stamped by
poverty and misery, whose women sold themselves; compulsory
hospitals for venereal patients; prostitution in all its permissive and
clandestine forms; incredible misery and riotous indulgence: such
garish colors did the war hurl upon the canvas of history to bring
forth the mad picture of the station.

Chapter 11

CIVILIAN DEBAUCHERY BACK HOME

Stealing Loses its Stigma— Mad Lust for Pleasure— Night Life Excesses-
Debaucheries of the War Profiteers — Rhine Pleasure Boats— Excess of
Women and Dearth of Men — Extra-Marital Affairs Increase — Sexual
Crimes — Venereal Diseases Among Very Young Girls — Instability of War
Marriages — Sex Experiences of Boys — "Dance of the Gonococci" — Statute
of Illegitimate Children Revised — Revolution of Morals — Short and In-
frequent Furloughs of Men — Sexual Aggressiveness of Women — "Supply
and Demand" in Sex Realm — Extravagance of Women's Fashions — "The
Uninhibited Woman"— The Marriage Pirate— Physical Attraction of the
Negro — Sexual Promiscuity in All Warring Nations — Piquant Movies,
Books, Posters, Etc.— Nudist Dens and Naked Parties— Male Prostitu-
tion—Orgies in "Limited Clubs"— Societies of Drug Addicts— "Women's
Love Slave" Club— Wealthy Women's Sex Societies— Other Private and
Secret Organizations

THE effects of the war on the hinterland, which helped to carry
it on, cannot readily be answered. Wide areas of the population,
especially of the urban proletariat and petit bourgeois suffered un-
speakably during these years, even in the allied countries which
were less harassed by economic deprivations. On the other hand,
in all the warring nations there arose a comparatively large group
to whom the war brought enormous wealth. This was not a new
phenomenon, of course. Daniel Defoe, two centuries earlier, had
complained of the war millionaires of his time, but as in everything
else, the World War made old things assume extraordinary pro-
portions. At one blow, morality, decency and solidity in business
transactions disappeared entirely. Everyone began to trade. Abetted
by an indifferent government, there arose a new mentality such
as had never appeared before, the mentality of the war purveyor,
who later was called the "War Profiteer." Theft lost its criminal
character. In supplying the army, it was considered quite natural
to lie, deceive and steal. The few prosecutions, which did not get
very far, did nothing to halt this trend.

The hunger for pleasure and lusty joy of this new class stamped
its seal upon the love life of the hinterland. The bitter contrast
between the luxurious life of that group which the war had exalted,
and the brutalizing conditions at the front constituted that spiritual
discrepancy between battle-front and hinterland which elicited so
many charges in war books. The most pregnant expression of this
was given by Romain Rolland when he made Clerambault say
after he had arrived in Paris:

187

1 88 THE SEXUAL HISTORY OF THE WORLD WAR

"The patrons of the cafes were ready to maintain the war for
twenty years if necessary."

The debauchery of the war profiteers has as its primary and
general basis, the fact that in the course of its history bourgeois
morality always begins to totter when one layer of the bourgeois
class has accumulated an excess of capital which cannot be em-
ployed in productive processes. In addition to this, there was a
psychological factor, namely, that the longer the war lasted, the
less likely did it appear that these nouveaux riches would be able to
save their stolen riches when peace would come. Hence the mad
rush to spend. At the end of August, 1918, the Vorwarts reported
that never before had the Rhine steamers been so crowded as in the
summer of 1918, never before had so much Rhine wine been con-
sumed never before had so many merry parties been arranged to
various portions of the Rhine district. So boisterous did these
parties become, that the commanding general in the vicinity of
Rudesheim ordered the police to quiet some of the obstreperous
private parties.

On the other hand, the economic misery in all its forms, as well
as the excess number of women, growing constantly greater as a
result of the drafting of the men, expressed themselves in the public
morality of the hinterland. Other factors that should be mentioned
are the vocational activity of woman, her freer moral conceptions
resulting from economic independence, the neglect of children of
the lower classes, and, as the combined consequence of all these
three conditions, the increase of extra-marital intercourse.

In the first years of the war sexual crimes and prostitution de-
creased everywhere. It was Exner's opinion that the decline in sex-
ual crimes, in what is today the Austrian republic, was due to the
fact that there were other worries at that time. But it seems much
more likely that the decrease in sexual crimes was due to other fac-
tors entirely; the scarcity of men (practically all of such crimes are
committed by men of fighting age), the supply of women wh.ch
was far in excess of the demand and, finally, the weakness of the
authorities who did endeavor to combat immorality but who were
unable to achieve very much owing to the fact that their personnel
was greatly reduced. In general we might say that the same thing is
true of sexual crimes as prostitution: if one is to believe the statis-
tics both of these declined after the outbreak of the war. It was
true that the number of controlled prostitutes decreased everywhere,
but the number of those who practiced clandestine prostitution

CIVILIAN DEBAUCHERY BACK HOME 189

increased enormously. Thus, whereas, in the five pre-war years
there were on the average 617 women arrested for clandestine pros-
titution, the average for the five war years was 860; and it may
be assumed that had the police been more active, the number would
have been much larger, for the average of the years immediately
following the war was 2530. The same condition seems to have
existed in other large cities.

The chief of police of Paris during the war, L. Lepine, was of
the opinion that the decline in controlled prostitution was due to
such causes as employment. He felt that a large number of former
prostitutes had now been able to find honest work owing to the
fact that so many jobs were vacant. Moreover, this Frenchman
insisted that besides the material grounds for a decent life there
was the additional factor that, during the war, professional im-
morality was more dangerous since venereal diseases were much
more common and contagion practically unavoidable. It was the
fear of contagion and the consequent incarceration that kept the
prostitute in the straight and narrow path. Now this argument is
vitiated by the fallacy that it does not give sufficient consideration
to clandestine prostitution for which the war gave more oppor-
tunity than ever before. Furthermore, it is very doubtful that the
fear of venereal diseases could have been so decisive a factor, in-
asmuch as the war saw a great extension of knowledge concerning
the prevention of these conditions. Be that as it may, the growth of
clandestine prostitution at home and, parallel with this, the appal-
ling spread of venereal diseases in all the warring nations are un-
deniable facts. It is noteworthy that, more than ever before, clan-
destine prostitution was practiced by young girls and married
women.

The large share of young girls in prostitution and venereal dis-
eases has been explained by H. Hofmann as follows: "The market
value of clandestine and occasional prostitution, especially of young
girls, rose during the war. Many women became homeless and
helpless and unable to resist the onslaught of men as a result of the
loosening of family ties and the often brutal separation of children
and parents when the family was expelled from its native place.
Without plan, without goal, many of these girls willingly followed
any friend who would take them along for a little while, and, when
they were discarded, they were completely bewildered and had no
alternative but to continue in the path in which they had begun.
Moreover, there were many cases where girls, who had come from

iqo THE SEXUAL HISTORY OF THE WORLD WAR

the country without funds and without sufficient preparation, were
compelled to remain in the city for quite a while, due to difficulty
in obtaining a visa, bad transportation facilities or other causes,
and were compelled to traffic with their bodies in order to live."

The prostitution of married women as well as of young girls was
of grave importance. The dissolution of marriage, by war, needs
a special investigation; it goes beyond the limits of this work. At
this point we only wish to suggest that after the war had been
raging for a short while the emptiness of marriage was revealed in
every land. It was seen that the female sex, in spite of all gestures,
phrases and editorials, would unite with their new sexual partners
just as the man cohabited in the station with his war girl; and that
the war marriage, like every other human product, was imperfect
and was unable to do justice to a pseudo-morality belonging to the
ruling classes. The situation of woman who, in the greatest chaos
of all history, demanded her natural right, which the male sex,
consciously or unconsciously always pursued, found only rigid
and unjust judges. The strictest and most unjust were themselves
women who, in various cities, allied as well as German, volunteered
to the police to get information regarding the sexual attachments
of suspected women. These actions show very clearly the envy
which those "strict" women felt toward those members of their
sex who were fortunate enough to have a man. All phases of the
protection of young people disclosed clearly the element of sexual
envy which, frequently and quite unconsciously, came to most gro-
tesque expression.

Of equal importance is the question of youth during the war.
Naturally we are concerned with the youth of both sexes, for the
prostitution of young girls, induced by the war, had as its counter-
part the precocious sex experiences of boys. Hundreds of youths,
whose fathers lay on the battlefield, achieved an extraordinary
position at home. Paternal authority had disappeared, and the
mother, completely absorbed by worries, work and distress, was
without power, unable to dictate to her children because she was
dependent on their wages (frequently the wages of shame). For
all these boys the beginning of the love life was nothing like a
bashful and tender whispering in the moonlight, but a direct and
brutal seizing of female breasts and female thighs.

These conditions were not confined to the depraved metropolis,
which the pious rustics had always abominated, but could be found
in the most old-fashioned little villages. Thus, in one little Swabian

CIVILIAN DEBAUCHERY BACK HOME 191

city a sixteen-year-old apprentice boasted that he had two young
ladies as lovers and as many others with whom he carried on more
or less indecent flirtations; and in the same nest of piety a sixteen-
year-old student of the gymnasium impregnated a fourteen-year-
old girl.

The multiplication of venereal diseases was, however, not con-
fined to the two classes of population just mentioned. The increase
was an absolute one. While life and property was being ruthlessly
destroyed on the battlefield, back at home there began the "dance
of gonococci" which reached orgiastic proportions immediately
after the war. In Paris, the number of those affected with syphilis,
during the first year of the war, increased by a third, and, in
England, the number of luetics in the large cities in 1916 were
estimated at ten per cent of the whole population. There are
numerous other available data illustrating the terrific increase of
venereal diseases at the hinterland in all the warring European
nations.

But all these terrifying conditions had one good consequence.
For the first time during the war, sexual life and its dangers were
openly discussed. During the years of the great blood bath, sex-
uality ceased to be taboo. In the larger cities like Paris, Vienna,
Prague, etc., hospitals were erected for prostitutes. Even in the
classical land of sexual hypocrisy, England, there was organized
in 19 1 6 a society for the prevention of venereal diseases which
aimed to enlighten the British masses on the dangers of sexual
diseases, and to agitate for the establishment of special institutions
for the treatment of syphilitics. The same year saw the inaugura-
tion in Germany of special clinics where information was given
on the subject of venereal diseases, the so-called Beratungsstellen
which were furiously opposed at the beginning, but enthusiastically
accepted later. In addition, the medieval treatment of illegitimate
children was subjected to a complete scrutiny and revision as
public morality was compelled to take cognizance of the enormous
increase of illegitimate intercourse. Perhaps the crassest example of
the changed attitude on this score was in England where, for a
while, there was an actual cult of "war babies," illegitimate children
whose fathers were soldiers. As a matter of fact, the number of
illegitimate births in all the districts of England where soldiers were
quartered showed such an unexpected rise that the lower House of
Parliament was forced to discuss the question of how to erase the
stigma of both the children and their mothers. A Member of Parlia-

i92 THE SEXUAL HISTORY OF THE WORLD WAR

ment, McNeil, stated that in a certain district at the beginning of
191 5 there were two thousand illegitimate births. Special reference
was made to the fact that the Australian soldiers exercised a par-
ticular fascination upon British women. In this connection we
might recall that the race fetishism of the English woman, and also
the French woman, found expression in huge numbers of children
of mixed breeds born during the war. In every land the question
of war children was a vital one.

If the love life of the lower stata of the population back at home
was characterized by economic distress and general dislocation
induced by the war, the luxurious night life of the great cities
constituted the frame in which the eroticism of the profiteers, the
important cocottes, and the ladies of the upper classes, had its play.
A comprehensive treatment of this question has been provided for
us by the famous historian of morals, Curt Moreck.

With all its destructive force, the war placed its bloody hands
upon the sex life of the warring nations, including those at home,
and shook the whole structure of society, preparing the way for
all sorts of degenerative excrescences. In a remarkably short time
there were changes which signified a complete revolution in all
the ethical and moral notions heretofore considered sound and
sacred. What took place in this rapid change was not a revolution
of moral values, which did not come to complete expression until
after the war, but rather a hellish onslaught of overwhelming
sexuality and a brutalizing and animalizing of sense pleasure.^ ^

This tendency became evident in the very first days of mobiliza-
tion, among those groups of men who, whether because of age or
other circumstances, believed themselves secure from war service
and openly avowed that the whole female sex, especially the more
desirable ones, would now be immediately accessible to them. The
more primitive an individual's mental reactions were, the more
violently did he assume the attitude just mentioned, which was
merely one expression of the feeling that the condition of war de-
noted a dissolution of all laws, and a return to primeval lawlessness.
During the war, society and state concentrate their interests upon
military and politic goals, and the individual is left very much to
himself in private matters. The result is that instinct, waiting only
for the loosening of all bonds, took a mad jump into the whirlpool
of pleasure. The feverish mood of the nations beset by war, magni-
fied sensual irritability, increased nervous susceptibility to the
point of psychosis, destroyed all inhibitions, and made individuals

CIVILIAN DEBAUCHERY BACK HOME 193

more susceptible to external impressions; it created a sexual hyper-
sensibility which made heedless and reckless even such persons
as were by nature staid. It is the uncertainty of the future, the
abolition of all guarantee of life, the dubiousness of all things, and
the constant shadow of death which renders everything gloomy—
that panicky fear at the threat of the unknown which combined
to create that psychological mood in which the senses become all-
powerful and imperiously demand complete fulfillment. Hence, as
the whole structure of peace times collapsed, even men with fixed
principles of life and structures of character became unresisting
instruments of Eros.

From that despairing mood of Aprhs nous le dbluge, there arose
an irresistible desire for pleasure as though the threatened vital
powers of the individual had concentrated themselves into his sen-
suality and were stormily demanding their satisfaction. The pleasure
of the moment was what decided the action of the individual, for
the present moment was the only certain one. The war destroyed
all plans, ideas and ideals. Since man had no time for thought and
reflection, he let himself be overcome by a feverishly nervous im-
pulse to be active. All his energies cried out to be translated into
activity and apart from his professional activity, these energies
found their release only in material joys and sensual pleasures. In
the world of women, this man found a ready partner, for the woman
was also a sufferer (from the absence of men) and she needed a
spiritual substitute for the deprivations of love and tenderness,
and also some sort of diversion from her sorrows and worries, some
consolation in the oppressive swarm of exciting and terrifying im-
pressions and reports. The senses were hungry for sensations and
every situation which promised a temporary oblivion of the daily
miseries was hungrily seized upon. And in the background stood
sexuality. The short and uncertain furloughs of their men could
scarcely be considered as sufficient satisfaction for the sexual needs
of these women. This circumstance favored those men who remained
at home imparting to them an extraordinary value. These men fre-
quently became the object of pursuit by the women who showed a
marked sexual aggressiveness. From the disproportionate relation
of supply and demand in the realm of sex, there arose a painful
situation in which the less stable elements showed signs of sexual
megalomania. The numerous women, who openly pursued men, gave
to life in the great cities during the war a special character.

The sexual aggressiveness imposed upon the women by the dearth

194 THE SEXUAL HISTORY OF THE WORLD WAR

of men frequently assumed ludicrous forms. Externally, it showed
itself in the arresting costumes worn by women everywhere, and
the disproportionate use of cosmetics. Despite the general economic
depression, for the profits of war flowed to a rather small group,
the war made women spend much more on luxuries, expensive
clothing, furs, decorations and cosmetics. No fashion, no matter
how extravagant or dissolute, was rejected, and the more it afforded
an opportunity of revealing or heightening female charms, the more
enthusiastically was it accepted. The dearth of men compelled
women to make the greatest efforts to lure, in the great combat for
men. Even unattractive men suddenly found themselves successful
and desired by women and were able to tell stories of adventures
with handsome and sophisticated women. The whole order of things
was changed. Men now received presents, letters and invitations
instead of giving; rich women would invite young men to the most
expensive restaurants and pay the bill. Not infrequently, in order
to make their cavaliers sufficiently presentable, they bought luxuri-
ous clothing for them and provided them with such slighter tokens
of affection as wristwatches, cigarette cases, rings, etc.

All that the law could do against this type of immorality was to
prevent it from becoming public. However, the only effect of this
move on the part of the authorities was to drive the evil into
secrecy. Those who desired these illicit pleasures refused to be
deprived of them, and they did not lose much time in discovering
the best circumstances for an unlimited exploitation of all the
opportunities afforded by secrecy. From this necessity of indulging
their expensive lusts, apart from the public gaze, there developed
in all the warring lands, under the leadership of shrewd business
speculators, a clandestine pleasure industry which was very skillful
in outwitting the government and its spies for long periods. What
they did was to set up "private" institutions where the pursuit of
the male by the female could be undertaken in a less public form,
as in the hotel, but which afforded sufficient opportunities to all
concerned. When the government finally learned of these activities
in any one establishment, all that was necessary to do was to change
the address.

These places were the playgrounds of two especially noteworthy
types of the vita sexualis during the World War which the war
phraseology designated as "the uninhibited woman" and the "mar-
riage pirate." Around these ranged a circle of related phenomena
beginning with young boys and girls who had broken away from

CIVILIAN DEBAUCHERY BACK HOME 195

parental supervision, and ending with older male and female world-
lings who found excitement in these secret amusement places. More-
over, the true demi-monde, now very little different from the rest
of the world, was represented here and lent the whole environment
the piquancy which she knew so well how to exude. Games, dancing
and flirtations were the elementary stages which served as the
points of contact for relations which were to become more intimate.

For the most part, luxurious private homes were rented by these
crafty purveyors of illicit pleasure. Distinguished houses, in the
best districts of the city, promised to offer less opportunity for
official suspicion. Under the facades of middle-class decency, there
developed a dissolute form of night life which kept on until
morning. No one who observed these debaucheries, which in Paris
and London assumed the most orgiastic forms, could believe that
pleasure could so make one forget the drabness of life which was
being lived not far off on the battlefield at the same time and with
which most of the participants were connected through some relative
or other.

Just how did the smart world of Paris (and its imitators every-
where) amuse themselves? At that time the police of Paris raided
and closed three hundred houses in which, aside from dancing and
carousing, intoxicants of all sorts were sold. All these holes of vice
did not open before eleven. Practically all these residences were
fitted out as saloons. In order to gain admission to these establish-
ments, it was necessary to show a recommendation from one of the
regular members or guests, or to appear in the company of such a
one. The admission fee ranged between twenty and one hundred
francs, depending upon the comforts desired. The price of a room
for the night was more than double the original payment. The
drinks here cost between three and ten times as much as that
demanded in the best restaurants. Many of these places had little
rooms, so-called cabinets partictdiers , in which little groups of men
and women would shut themselves away from the eyes of all the
world, and sup and play in the style of the soupers of the petites
maisons of the eighteenth century. It became fashionable for every
sophisticated woman in Paris to tell of her thrilling adventures in
such spots. Rich South Americans were attracted to this clever
and chic institution. Despite police intervention, these nocturnal
haunts multiplied. In the most elegant section of the city, between
the Champs Elysees and the Bois de Boulogne, there lived a foreign
woman who issued invitations for the night. The admission fee

196 THE SEXUAL HISTORY OF THE WORLD WAR

was fifty francs for which one danced the tango, played bridge,
baccarat and other games of chance, and finished with apache
dances (at least the official portion was concluded with these wild
dances). All this took place between midnight and morning, behind
carefully shut windows, thick window-shades, heavy curtains, and
doors equipped with silencing effects. Many women of the middle
and higher class, whose men were at the front, were regular patrons
of this establishment and were in no wise different from the demi-
mondaines. On the Avenue de Wagram, one of the handsomest
private homes was converted into a gambling den, where during
the night tremendous sums were lost and won, where elegant and
beautiful women also ventured other possessions of theirs, and
where beautiful flesh, despite its comparative accessibility, sold at
a high price. The Baroness de Vaughan, the morganatic widow of
King Leopold of Belgium, once suffered great losses here and,
since she was suspicious of the honesty of the game, she complained
to the police. Accordingly, the place was raided and among the
personnel were found Russian princesses, many belonging to the
French nobility, dancers, jockeys, etc., engaged either in gambling
or in the full fury of amorous practice in the privacy of some of
the elegant cabinets. These secret clubs and resorts of a similar
nature constituted, for the police, a veritable mine of contemporary
curiosities and social monsters. In a raid once on one of these
luxurious establishments in the vicinity of Park Monceau, there
were found no less than twenty-three army speculators grown rich
overnight, playing, dancing and toying with representatives of the
great and of the half-world. (About a million francs in cash was
found here.)

As far as the dances at these establishments were concerned, they
began with the well-known tango, but soon the regular clients
demanded something new. There was then presented a "prisoner's
dance," with castanets, accompanied by the cry of Kamerad,
Kamerad! but this did not find favor. Another number, "The Grave
Dance," became very popular. The tablecloth had long tassels
with little bells on them, and whichever dancers touched one of
the tassels, causing a little bell to ring, had to leave the dancing
circle. This continued until only one dancer remained. Since the
tassels hung very low, the dancers had to go about with bent knees
like miners in a low tunnel. In this game, the women would remove
their dancing pumps and soon everyone would be dancing this

CIVILIAN DEBAUCHERY BACK HOME 197

"grave dance" in stockinged feet. All superfluous clothes were
unhesitatingly discarded.

At the intimate banquets given at these inns, many adventure-
some ladies appeared in widows' costumes in order to lend a piquant
touch to these entertainments. These "war widows," who had not
sacrificed anything during the war, were a Parisian specialty. They
antagonized public opinion as they marched pompously down the
boulevards. Wild female sex-hyenas found, in these secret clubs,
ample opportunity to draw near to attractive representatives of the
black race, both soldiers and civilians; for a number of shrewd
entrepreneurs in this entertainment business had soon realized the
attraction that negroes could exert upon these irresponsible and
rampant females. As a matter of fact, when these blacks were
enlisted in Africa they were inveigled into service partially by
the promise of white meat waiting for them in Europe where, they
were informed, white women were very fond of their dark skin.
This motive is said to have influenced many to join the ranks.

The characteristic of that epoch was a promiscuous irregularity
in sexual relations in all the warring lands, combined with a frivo-
lous attitude toward sexual intercourse in general. Many men living
in moderate circumstances and earning a living with considerable
difficulty, suddenly saw themselves transformed into possessors of
great wealth as a result of their connection with the supplies of the
army and munitions. This wealth continued to flow to them unin-
terruptedly with no extra activity on their own part. This easy
wealth demoralized them and the women who also lived from this
inexhaustible stream of money; all were suddenly seized by a wild
and pagan desire for pleasures of all sorts. They became accus-
tomed to a luxurious life full of ease and the most precious appur-
tenances. On the other hand, where there was no multiplication of
riches, competition grew more intense and prostitution increased.
This occasional prostitution surpassed, by far, the former profes-
sional prostitution. In these days of the crassest sort of Mammon
worship, woman's body became an article of trade which was
dumped upon the market in enormous quantities; it was a capital
from which the women of all classes knew how to draw interest.

All that has been said of the orgiastic outgrowths of Parisian
night life in secret clubs and amusement places, was just as true
of London and Berlin. In regard to the attitude of woman to her
erotic adventures during the war, Dr. Huot, who has investigated
this matter thoroughly, has stated that as a result of the social

198 THE SEXUAL HISTORY OF THE WORLD WAR

transformation induced by the war and the consequent confusions
of mind and spirit and the complete independence enjoyed by these
women, as a result of the prolonged absence of their husbands,
there grew up among certain classes of women a complete anarchy
of morals. While they maintained a sort of patriotic feeling for the
government, in the realm of their affectual life they lost every
criterion of conduct aside from their own lusts. The majority of
them regarded their derelictions with a quaint resignation and even
with a sort of merriment, free from every trace of scruple as though
they were the innocent victims of an ineluctable fate. Everything
was explained and atoned for by referring to the fact that the war
made such conditions inevitable. There were women who were firmly
convinced that their honesty and decency was in no way impunged
as long as their heart was not concerned in the whole nasty business,
and that their defections would harm nobody provided the secret
did not leak out; and what is more, they remained passionate
adorers of their heroic husbands who were sacrificing themselves at
the front, even at the moment when they were deceiving said
husbands.

In London there was organized a national committee for the
safeguarding of public morals which undertook to combat sexual
abuses and malefactors, and to close down all such secret nests of
vice which induced promiscuity and constituted a veritable market
of lust. The chairman of this committee was a Mr. James Mar-
chand who asserted that, while London was a den of iniquity, he,
none the less, regarded it as "unEnglish" and unpatriotic to hold
that fact up to all the eyes of the world. But the London press was
less restrained and believed that it was possible to combine patriot-
ism with the branding 01 the immorality that reigned in such
haunts. The press called London a veritable Eldorado for men with
money to burn. Placards with naked women, living women who
sought to emulate Mother Eve, piquant literature, movies that
defied every description, were everywhere to be seen; and that
which took place in secret was much worse than this. There was
no lack of private residences and hotels in which orgies worthy of
Sardanapalus were celebrated at which the mondaines of London
practiced the handiwork of Circe. All these conditions were suffi-
cient to stamp the English metropolis as a veritable Sodom. As a
result of this agitation, a number of secret clubs were shut down
by the police and in the wardrobes of these establishments there
were found not only the elegant coats and wraps of the ladies and

CIVILIAN DEBAUCHERY BACK HOME 199

gentlemen, but also the rest of their costume for all clothing had
come to be regarded as a hindrance to their social intercourse. The
guests, of whom there were usually between thirty and fifty, women
predominating, were all recognized, and in the catalogue of names,
there could be found some of the most distinguished ones in English
society.

These conditions were even worse in Germany and Austria, cut
off as they were from all sources of supplies. Whereas in the
poorer quarters of the city, poverty and starvation increased daily
and food and clothing were supplied in meager rations, in the dens
of secret vice the most exquisite delicacies were piled up through
some secret manipulations, and sold at incredible prices. The
choicest wines and delicatessen, that which would have meant health
and strength to the weak and stricken of the war, was in these pens
of pleasure misused and wasted. The authorities did try to control
the public expressions of social life and succeeded in a large meas-
ure. But it was ridiculous to suppose that, by closing a few cheap
saloons and prohibiting a few more streets to the operations of
street-walkers, morality would be saved. Take, for example, the
edict issued by the Chief of Police of Schoneberg which was as
follows:

"The proprietors of public places will be held responsible for the
conduct of their guests which, in keeping with the great but
difficult times we are living in, should be serious. . . . Every in-
decent manifestation on the part of the half-world and the world-
lings is particularly undesirable. Police measures will be taken to
control every infraction of decency."

This well-meant, but psychologically mistaken plan, was very
foolish because all that it sought to prohibit was merely driven into
secrecy and continued in an aggravated form behind closed doors.
In those days, which the worthy police chief referred to as "great
but difficult times," the owners of various types of cheap hotels,
used for brief amorous encounters, had an extraordinarily numerous
clientele composed, not only of the professional street-girls and
their customers who had been their clients before, but also women
of bourgeois society who would shamelessly enter these "hotels"
and "pensions" where rooms were hired out for any length of time.
It was these women who now became the steady patrons of such
haunts. They would find their partners mostly at the afternoon teas
of the modern hotels where an elegant public would congregate, and
where, under the guise of utmost decency, there flourished a verita-

200 THE SEXUAL HISTORY OF THE WORLD WAR

ble love market. The recognized underworld of prostitution regarded
the intrusion of these women into their domain as injurious compe-
tition, for their rivals very frequently not only gave their favors
but even paid the man when the male partner had been able to
win the sympathy and interest of the woman. In the circles of the
masculine worldlings and those associated with them, the informa-
tion was soon spread concerning just where the elegant and rich
of these lively women were to be found. With complete lack of dis-
cretion every man would share his experiences with his fellows and
exchange addresses of women as well as women themselves.

A number of the female guests at these teas were ladies from the
provinces who, hungry for experiences, had fled to the metropolis
from the blankness of their own provincial life. With true womanly
instinct and the adaptability native to their sex, they were able
to fit into the new situation and to go about capturing men with
all the raffinement of their metropolitan sisters. They gave them-
selves to all the delights of the day and night with almost insatiable
appetite, and without fear of scandal; indeed, they surrendered
themselves all the more readily to their instincts because they had
only a brief span in which to enjoy the pleasures of the great city.
Often these ladies tried to contract some sort of stable relationship
so as to prepare a ready rendezvous for their future visits and not
lose precious time in search for available bed-partners.

Letters that have come into our hands from such adventurous
female libertines afford us abundant information concerning the
forms of sexual pleasure common among these pairs. Nowhere is
there a hint of a yearning for tenderness; all that is desired is the
sexual titillation whose satisfaction constituted the goal of the whole
activity. It was brutal sense pleasure which didn't even give a
thought to veiling itself but shamelessly avowed its panting lust-
fulness. These letters show most cynically how rapid was the pass-
age from the flirtation in the hotel lobby to all the corporeal details
of coition in which all the complications and finenesses of pleasure
were investigated; and if the private copulation was not found
thrilling enough a small group of kindred spirits would congregate
to test the further possibilities of the love play en bloc, in orgiastic
intoxication.

The partial limitation which was placed upon cabarets and similar
institutions during the war, especially in Germany, induced certain
shrewd businessmen to transfer these establishments to secret places
which they dressed up by the name of a "limited club," but all that

CIVILIAN DEBAUCHERY BACK HOME 201

was necessary for admission to this club was the possession of the
password which could be gotten from any of the steady guests, and,
of course, a considerable admission fee. One could always get in
if accompanied by one of the regular patrons. These places were
very popular among the worldlings and the ardent females in pur-
suit of men, for they served as the meeting ground. Moreover, the
performances which were given here went far beyond anything
that could be permitted at a public restaurant or cabaret, and
they set the tone for the liberated desires and whims of these
people, mad with life, and served as fitting preparation for the
intimate encounters that were to follow later. If other and stronger
means were necessary, there were wines and whiskies available.
Furthermore, even during the war, other stimulants which later
became shockingly popular began to be used, such as morphine
and cocaine. Certain secret clubs had the reputation of being play-
grounds of narcotic addicts, and many women were among the
devotees. In short these institutions recognized no limitations.

These places were all remarkably alike. At the center of the
festivities there would usually be some famous dancer whose erotic
dances would lend the requisite sensual atmosphere. The chief
supporters of the whole environment, which required a great deal
of money to run, were the manufacturers and traders who had
come to wealth by the fortunes of war and the crowd of ne'er-do-
wells who clustered around the infamous profiteers. The "artistic"
dance in the nude by one or more dancers — in one particular case
it was announced to the guests as the "dance of crime and of vice"
and acted out before the guests by a dancer who had grown famous
in this specialty and her partner— was sometimes just a program
number and something to set the mood; but in other cases, it was
an end in itself and was participated in by all the guests. These
gay parties did not always remain concealed, for occasionally a
participant would reveal these orgies and the matter would come
to the attention of the police who would one night raid the given
temple of love and disrupt the festivities.

Men and women of the higher ranks of society crowded most
eagerly to the studio parties held by artists at that time at which
the Bohemians and their models carried on in the most animal
fashion. It is true that for the rich bourgeois, who were interested
in such scenes of nakedness and lust as were here enacted, these
parties lacked the material wealth and splendor to which they were
accustomed but to compensate for that the animal vitality was

202 THE SEXUAL HISTORY OF THE WORLD WAR

higher. In this way it came about that the artist-folk would con-
stitute a minority and the guests of the other world would set the
tone of their whole occasion which was, however, in no wise dis-
tinguished from the free intercourse common to la Bohbme. To
the latter, the distinguished guests of the bourgeois world were
not unwelcome because they not only brought with them the
aroma of their own world but contributed to the festivities of the
night by supplying heavily laden baskets of wine and delicacies.
Thus, on the outskirts of Munich, there was a house in which
several more or less well-known artists lived and where, night after
night, a whole line of autos could be seen discharging very rich
and elegant guests. In this house, lights were not extinguished until
the sun had put them out and on the floors, and even on the steps,
there was wild and dissolute dancing and embracing, singing and
laughing, a veritable carnival of lust and life. This limitless expan-
sion of energies and uncontrolled sway of instinct were particularly
evident in those people who were continually preaching to others
who knew nothing but the grayness and the misery and the sorrow
of the dreadful war period, the ringing messages of perseverance.
It was they who were seeking to drive the others to ever-increasing
sacrifices in order that their own wealth might be magnified and
their pleasure increased.

A question that is intimately connected with the eroticism of
the hinterland is the sexual life of the woman of the higher ranks
of society during the war. This life was, of course, a product of
numerous factors, such as sex hunger induced by the absence of
men and the consequent initiative in amorous matters that the
female sex began to assume. These factors were true of all women
but only those of the moneyed classes had the economic power to
satisfy and indulge their desires. In the lower strata these had to be
appeased in different ways. Accordingly, the results of the lack of
men were non-existent for women of wealth because they could
always obtain men. A specific consequence of this dearth of men
arose during the war — the prostitution of men which was seen in
all the larger cities of warring Europe. Perhaps the most complete
information on this score is to be derived from Professor Eduard
von Liszt of Vienna. This scholar published a short study on the
changes in the stratification of the population of Vienna induced
by the war in which he pointed out that the loosening of marriage
had been appreciably aided by the formation of transitory rela-
tionships (which in turn were a consequence of the absence of

CIVILIAN DEBAUCHERY BACK HOME 203

men). Many married women no longer thought of themselves as
married and many even hoped for the dissolution of their marriage
ties through the death of their husbands. Liszt pointed to the in-
crease in the number of abortions and child murders as proof of
his thesis. The opportunity was now given to all women to enter
into these gallant relationships and not a few took advantage of
the freedom. Subsequently Liszt came into the possession of very
interesting data concerning the prostitution of men in Vienna and
we now take the liberty of quoting his own account:

"I recently met a former officer, let us call him A., who now
occupies an important civil position. Since he was in excellent
humor, he told me the following experience that he had had during
the war as an officer stationed in Vienna. At that time, he had been
in great need of money and he noted with considerable envy that
one of his colleagues, another officer whom we shall call B., was
always well provided with cash. One day A. complained to B.
concerning the miserable state of his finances, whereupon the latter
replied with comradely interest, that if A. would do the same as
he, A. would also be well provided with money. As a result, the
needy officer promised to do everything that was expected of him.
Shortly thereafter B. came to him and bade him be prepared that
evening: an auto would call for him and A. was to go wherever
he would be taken. B. informed his friend that he need have no
fear concerning anything and before he went he gave him a certain
password, 'L.F.D.'

"A. was then informed how he was to strike up new acquain-
tances with women of the society. He was to sit in a certain Vienna
cafe, order something and then set his credential unobtrusively
before him. This done, the lady returned to her friends who were
waiting in the adjoining room and called out laughingly, 'So the
lion is tamed.' Then followed the debut of the lion. After his
services had been rendered, he was brought back to his home by
the same auto with the windows still screened from the outside.
As he left the villa, the female servant slipped into his hand an
envelope containing 120 Austrian kronen, by no means a trivial
figure at that time."

What the Austrian officer went on to relate to me about his
further exploits is material for the pornographer only. However,
one of the more innocent episodes may be cited here. It concerned
an ostensibly "innocent" girl, a demi-vierge, who wanted sexual
pleasure (without any danger attached) but still felt shame before

204 THE SEXUAL HISTORY OF THE WORLD WAR

a man. She had turned to her aunt for advice on this matter and
the latter introduced her to A. What was most piquant in this
anecdote was the instruction given to the officer by the aunt before
meeting the girl. The aunt assured the girl that she had hypnotized
the officer so that he would gratify every desire of hers but would
never remember her or anything connected with her. The man
appears to have played the role very well."

It is understood that such things are not at all new. Long before,
Gumplowicz had shown that when women had been left alone
during wars, in previous centuries, they entered into intimate rela-
tions with the serfs at home. The tradition and history of antiquity
and the Middle Ages contain copious references to such situations.
Thus Dlugossius, Historia Polonica relates that Polish women dur-
ing 1676: "Diuturna maritorum exspectatione jessce . . . ad
servorum convolant nonnullos (uxores) amplexus." Naturally mod-
ern times contain innumerable instances of this sort.

Chapter 12

GENITAL INJURIES, WAR EUNUCHS, ETC.

Gun Wounds in the Testicles— The Eunuchs of the World War—Steinach's
Experiments to Restore Virility— Transplanting of Testicles— Literary Use
of Such Material— Woman's Relation to War Cripples— Sexual Pathology
—Disappearance of Libido, Erection and Ejaculation— Examples of War
Perversion — Sexual Regression and Infantilism — War Neurosis and Sexu-
ality—Sadistic Methods of Treatment— Kaufmann' s Shock Cure — Its Ter-
rible Tortures— Cruelty in Psychiatric Wards— Soldiers Deliberately Wound
Themselves— Venereal Diseases Self-inflicted— The Shadow of Death

FOR four and a half long years the war machine whirred and
whirled, constantly demanding more human flesh to stuff into its
insatiable, cruel maw. Those who fell into its merciless wheels
came out, if not dead, at least crippled or undone. It was given to
only a few to remain in the "steel bath" for any length of time
without sustaining injury to body or soul. A Sittengeschichte of
the World War cannot omit these victims of war for the problem
of war injuries and war cripplings has numerous connections with
questions of sexual life as will appear presently. We shall confine
ourselves to an investigation of the problem: how far sexual life was
influenced by physical and psychical wounds.

Above all, it was shot wounds in the testicles and also injuries
to the spinal marrow which induced a complete disappearance of
the sexual functions. Injuries of this sort were not uncommon
during the war which explains their frequent occurrence in litera-
ture. Yet it appears that poetry gave much more attention to this
problem of emasculation during the war than did science. One of
these cases became famous in medical literature because the patient
became a subject for transplantation experiments. The following
report was given by Dr. Robert Lichtenstern: "On June 13, 1915,
a twenty-nine-year-old soldier sustained a gun wound on the left
thigh which inflicted grave injuries upon the scrotum, both testicles
and the urethra. When the patient was brought to the hospital, he
noticed that in urinating most of the urine ran out through the
wound in the scrotum, only a small portion being voided in the
natural way. He was suffering from gangrene of both testicles and
serious wounds in the urethra. The next day both gangrened testi-
cles were excised because there was danger of a generalized infec-
tion. A few days after this operation, the fever declined and the
suppuration as well. The patient voided most of his urine through

205

206 THE SEXUAL HISTORY OF THE WORLD WAR

the perineal wound. As a result of his injuries, the patient's libido
had declined tremendously, but in the first two weeks during erotic
conversations, he had erections on two occasions.

"On July 7, 191 5, he was admitted to the surgical department of
the Vienna Hospital and submitted to another examination. He
was a large, powerful man with normal internal organs. His whole
conduct was distinguished by an indifference to the outside world.
There was no trace of testicles and on both sides of the wound
there were the granulated stumps of both ligated seminal vesicles,
in the middle of which the urethra lay free. The prostate showed,
upon rectal examination, a normal size and consistency; the blad-
der emptied by a catheter was clear. In order to close his urethral
wound, a temporary catheter was introduced; in the course of the
next fourteen days, his wound became perfectly clear and began
to form scar tissue. The opening of the fistula closed so that the
catheter could be removed; the patient got up and urinated in the
normal way. But he still showed a complete indifference toward
everything that happened in the hospital and towards his com-
rades; he read nothing and manifested no interest whatever in the
war. In answer to questions he replied that he had absolutely no
libido and no erections. Close observation showed that for prac-
tically six weeks until the last day of August, he had no erections
at all and that, despite various devices calculated to arouse him, he
felt no libido whatever. For the most part the patient sat near his
bed or at the window, ate voraciously, slept a lot, and busied
himself with absolutely nothing at all. The loss of both testicles
resulted in a remarkable increase of adipose tissue, especially around
the neck which gave the patient a peculiarly stupid appearance.
His facial hair, especially his mustache, fell out completely, and
his bodily hair decreased too, especially at the linea alba which
became almost hairless so that the pubic hairs were set off hori-
zontally from the abdominal epidermis."

As has been mentioned, this case became famous because, as a
result of certain experiments that Steinach had made upon animals,
an attempt was made to transplant upon this patient a testicle
which had been removed from a case of cryptorchism that had been
operated upon for this ailment. The result of the transplantation
aroused considerable attention in medical circles for the patient
showed marked improvement. Various castration symptoms, such
as adiposity, altered trichosis, loss of libido and psychic indiffer-

GENITAL INJURIES, WAR EUNUCHS, ETC. 207

entism, all receded temporarily so that the patient actually enter-
tained the idea of marrying.

Other organic injuries also induced a whole series of grave dis-
turbances of the sexual function. Thus Boenheim has described a
case where as a result of a gun wound in the vicinity of the second
lumbar vertebra, there supervened the loss of ejaculation, orgasm
and libido.

As has been said, the psychological side of this problem was
seized upon by literature and treated by many writers. The sensa-
tions of the unfortunate eunuchs of the World War and their
conduct of life which entailed a total reorganization of their life-
pattern, offered poets and writers elaborate material for literary
treatment. One of the most moving representations of this sort we
quote from Bruno Vogel's magnificent war book:

"Pushing myself along the ground with my arms and my right
foot, I crawled over on my belly. I drank greedily and wanted to
finish the whole bottle. I crawled further, making my way slowly
over limbs writhing in their death agony and flaming fever, be-
yond large heaps of charred coal in the form of human beings,
gazed into eyes torn wide open as though they could not realize
that they were already dead, fell over wounded men who were
groaning as loudly as though they were lying with a woman in
passion. Soon both of my canteens were empty. I saw Sczepczyk
again. With amazing precision his generative organs had been shot
from his body. 'Herr Leutenant,' he whispered, a little bit ashamed
and in deep confidence, 'Herr Leutenant, and I have never yet had
a girl.' He gladly accepted the cigarette I gave him and I softly
stroked his hair and forehead. Finally I slipped my hand over his
eyes and, as a little smile of pleasure curled over his mouth, I
pushed my mercifully brutal sword into his side. There passed
over him a movement as though he wanted to sneeze, and that was
all. He was saved. I had committed a murder."

The devastating reaction which occurs when one realizes that
for the rest of one's life one will be unable to enjoy the highest
pleasure of this mortal life, has been well depicted for us in the
famous Siberian diary of Edwin Erich Dwinger entitled, The Army
Behind Barbed Wire. The young author lay in a Russian hospital
for prisoners-of-war with an abdominal wound. One evening, after
supper, where they had again been served black kascha, a heavy
groat which none of them was able to accommodate in his weak
stomach, he saw that the man who had sustained an injury of the

208 THE SEXUAL HISTORY OF THE WORLD WAR

testicles was getting up from his bed for the first time. This man
came right up to the author and looked at him as though he had
just awakened from a frightful dream.

"I say," he began, "please tell me — you are an educated man
and must know it — will it go without?"

"What do you mean, comrade?" Dwinger asked dismayed.

Thereupon he opened his drawers and made a short cutting
movement and said painfully, "They cut it off for me. It isn't
there any more. Isn't that so?"

Dwinger didn't know whether to tell the truth or not. He really
wasn't able to do it. So he muttered something to the effect that
he believed that it was possible . . . only that . . . there wouldn't
be any children.

"So," mumbled the unfortunate man, "so there won't be any
children." He was silent for a moment, breathed with difficulty
and then drew a picture from his shirt which he held before my
eyes. It showed a broad, buxom girl, a perfect child-bearing ma-
chine. "My wife," he said briefly. "Until now we weren't able to
have any children because there wasn't any money for them."
However, it was his wife's fondest wish to have at least six chil-
dren, for she held that without children life was nothing. Having
said this he turned around slowly and walked to his bed, stretched
himself out painfully and never spoke to anyone else until they
sent him to Siberia. It is significant that we meet the tragic figure
of this emasculated man further on in the novel, but at this later
stage, he rejoices that he does not have to suffer the sexual hunger
which the others are being plagued by.

Before we turn to view the panorama of these most pitiful vic-
tims of the war, we must cast a glance at the women who were tied
to such men and who indirectly were the victims of the mass
insanity of war. It is the special merit of the poet, Ernst Toller, to
have illuminated the tragedy of these women in their relations to
their castrated husbands. Toller's Hinkemann may be regarded as
the final literary formula of the emasculated soldier who returns
home from the wars, and the inability of his wife to continue a
veritably inhuman sacrifice in his behalf. In many cases, the wife
of the war eunuch was animated by the best and most noble
motives, just like Hinkemann's wife; but all of these pathetically
noble resolves were shipwrecked on the rocks of our workaday,
all-too-human life. If we are going to lend our pity to any of the
marriages ruined by the war, we certainly should expend it here,

GENITAL INJURIES, WAR EUNUCHS, ETC. 209

for in this case we are dealing with a group of men who will never
be able to find their lost happiness by the side of a woman. From
every outcry of Toller's hero, we hear the whole dismal and
appalling tragedy of a creature who has gone through the vast hell
of war, and it is a cry which can never be silenced. How brutal
is the reply to Hinkemann by his wife's seducer, Paul Grosshahn,
who rebukes the cripple for seeking to keep his wife a nun. Hinke-
mann is informed by the seducer that he is in reality nothing more
to his wife now than a ground for divorce!

How little the war mentality was able to take cognizance of the
actual needs of human beings, appears from the demands made
upon women in connection with the invalidism of their husbands.
It was held to be quite natural that women should remain chained
for the rest of their lives to crippled men, and that they should be
willing to live this sort of sacrificial existence. In regard to this
class of human beings, it was expected that not only would the
spirit be willing, but also that the flesh would be free of all weak-
ness. For a little while it appeared that all the evils of war would
be abolished if only there were the certainty that the cripples and
invalids who returned from the battlefield would not have to
remain without their wives or live unmarried. In this sacrifice of
her own happiness, the preachers of this gospel saw the essential
patriotic duty of every woman — and, of course, no further ground
was necessary than this. From every newspaper and pulpit this
message was shouted at women. The Hungarian archbishop, Johann
Csernoch, preached in this fashion as early as the second month
of the war. This vogue waned, however, as early as the end of the
very first year of the war. It turned out that the solicitude of those
responsible for the war toward the welfare of the victims of the
war, was only a part of war propaganda. Even in England, where
this' artificial ideology could show its greatest triumphs and where
this vogue went so far that parents and wives looked with pride
at their sons and husbands who returned from the battlefield crip-
pled, the propaganda nature of this whole ideology was just as
apparent.

In a German essay of that time dealing with this question we
read the following: "Many people will honestly desire an answer
to the question of how anyone can propose to a normal woman
that she marry a cripple. The answer is not very easy, but none
the less science has given it. Our orthopedic surgery has gotten to
the point today where it can take a man who has lost his arms

2io THE SEXUAL HISTORY OF THE WORLD WAR

or legs and render him capable of earning his own living; by
teaching him proper exercises and giving him proper appliances,
modern science can actually fit this man to do the most varied
kinds of work. ... All that is necessary is that women and girls
should learn to take the proper attitude to our honored war heroes.
For this spirit must be learnt. In this new attitude to cripples the
great power of love will be able to accomplish tremendous things;
but the first thing that is necessary is to put oneself into the new
relationship and to become accustomed to the fact that this or
that man has no arm or leg."

Pious counsels such as these might have been taken to heart at a
time when patriotic vanity spoke in favor of the invalids. But very
soon, in this respect also, life demanded its own, and true to itself
but merciless to its victims, it did not permit itself to be violated
so that the crime of those who had demanded war would appear
less grave because the consequences of the war were being glozed
over in this fashion. And if even after the cult of the wounded
ebbed, certain women in the early period of the war still continued
to feel attracted to wounded men this was, to a large extent, due
to a pathological condition. Sexual pathology has taught us that
there is scarcely a single bodily deformity or abnormality which
will definitely deprive its possessor of every possibility of woman's
love, for disgusting as it may seem to the normal person, it is these
very abnormalities which act as erotic attractions upon certain
members of the opposite sex (varieties of fetishism and masoch-
ism). A short time ago the Berlin Institut fur Sexual] or schung
received a long communication from a man who lived in a rural
German community, describing this kind of relationship between
his own wife and a war cripple. The unhappy husband recognized
and described very accurately the uncanny charm exercised by his
rival upon his wife who had formerly been an exemplary partner.
This case was typical of many others.

Let us now return to our original theme. We have already seen
that injuries to the testicles and genitals resulted in the extinction
of the sexual function, and insofar as they led to castration, resulted
in all the sequelae of eunuchism. But there was a whole series of
other injuries which were also connected with grave disturbances
of the sexual function. To this category of war injuries belonged
all injuries to the head where the brain was affected, various con-
tusions of the spinal marrow and similar wounds which resulted
in a complete extinction of the sexual function.

GENITAL INJURIES, WAR EUNUCHS, ETC. 211

Even without these injuries, many wounded men complained of
disturbed sex function and there are statistics to bear out these
complaints. Thus, Dr. F. Pick found among twenty-five officers
and seventy-five soldiers who were in his service that ten of the
former and seven of the latter complained of high grade disturb-
ances of this sort. In more than half of these cases, libido, erection
and ejaculation had completely disappeared and in the others,
while the libido had not been extinguished, the erections were
meager and unsatisfactory and the ejaculations completely absent.
While in the majority of cases, sexual disturbances disappeared by
the side of other symptoms of the disease, in the case of two con-
valescents ill from jaundice and arthritis, these erotic symptoms
were regarded as the cause of their nervousness, and in one case
led to ideas of inferiority and attempts at suicide. Pick saw the
origin of this impotence primarily in the so-called "commotion
neurosis" which induces changes in the lumbo-sacral marrow with
consequent injury to the centrum genitospinale, and also in the
enforced abstinence at the front. That the sexual hunger of the
soldiers was in all respects calculated to produce these results, we
have seen in our consideration of eroticism in the trenches.

In general, the purely psychic disturbances of the war could
exercise a considerable influence not only on the intensity but also
on the direction of the sexual impulse. This is a question con-
cerning which there is a considerable difference of opinion. That
perversions arose among soldiers, that there was a definite shunting
of the erotic impulse to another direction, cannot be maintained
in the strict sense of the terms. Wherever there were generated
new sexual needs which tended in a direction different from the
norm of sexual activity, we may see the coming to power of erotic
notions which were present before, but which came to dominance
only during the war, whereas previously they had been kept under
strong control. We know that the soldier's manner of life, espe-
cially the atmosphere of the trenches, was all too prone to throw
off inhibitions which had been accumulated in the course of human
history and in the development of the individual. All this belongs
to the phenomena which we shall consider in the chapter on
Bestialization. Nothing is clearer than that, as a result of this
process which was undergone by every soldier to a greater or less
degree, unconscious motives of an animal-infantile-primitive sort
were freed from their former subservience to the censorship of

2i2 THE SEXUAL HISTORY OF THE WORLD WAR

consciousness and civilization, and were given a tremendous oppor-
tunity for fulfillment.

Wulffen has brought to our attention the following case which
illustrates the general set-up in cases of reversion. A certain officer
who returned home from the war made the following strange
request of his wife: That she put a dog's collar around his neck and
then whip him with a dog-whip as he crawled around the room on
all fours. It is obvious that this is a case of zoo-masochism, the
roots of which extended into this man's past and all that the war
did was to liberate the abnormal impulse from its inhibitions. It
may be remarked in passing that Wulffen has also expressed an
opinion shared by many others, that the impotence of many men
who returned home on a furlough was attributable to unconscious
homosexual components which had become strengthened on the
battlefield and which now on their return home expressed them-
selves in an aversion to woman. This was certainly true of a number
of such cases.

We wish to cite another case of "war perversion" which has
been investigated by Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld. This case is espe-
cially interesting as an illustration of the aberration of infantilism
which was especially favored by the whole environment of the
war and came to expression in such phenomena as the aversion to
work and dreaminess of many soldiers insofar as these conditions
were expressions of the pathological state of infantilism. This case
concerned a young officer who had been wounded in a bomb
explosion. He had been left with a very active tic convulsif. The
patient admitted that, long before this time, he had had numerous
sexual compulsive notions but he had always been able to exorcise
them. However, after his war experiences, he was completely domi-
nated by these painful sexual imaginings which had a very strongly
infantile character. The strongest erotic feelings were aroused in
him when he saw little children, especially little boys, chastised
and beaten on their bare posteriors and it gave him the greatest
pleasure to imagine himself in the place of the punished child. He
was also excited when he saw children attending to their natural
needs but he could never become active with them; the very
thought made him feel disgusted. At the sight of such spectacles
he would feel sexual excitation and then when he got home he
would recall the whole situation and satisfy himself. The patient,
who was twenty-five years old, admitted that various childish

GENITAL INJURIES, WAR EUNUCHS, ETC. 213

phrases continually ran through his mind and that he preferred to
wear boys' clothing.

In any consideration of the relation between war injuries and
sexuality, we must not fail to make some reference to the various
types of war neuroses. In these cases we are dealing with the psy-
chological reactions of a fairly large number of soldiers to the
experiences of war. That neuroses did not occur more frequently
is really a token of the capacity for adaptation to be found in the
kulturmensck, an adaptation that would have been utterly im-
possible for the man of former times. Inasmuch as all forms of
war neuroses were, without exception, accompanied by light dis-
turbances of sexual life, we are obliged to consider this question
more closely.

During the war, the question of war neuroses was discussed with
a great deal of bitterness. Everybody knows the type of man
afflicted with war-palsy or tremors induced by the war. Those living
documents of the criminal insanity of war can still be found on
the street corners, particularly of the Central European cities.
Through the incessant trembling of their hands or their bodies,
they hope to find in the pity of passersby a substitute for the grati-
tude their fatherland owes them but has never paid. They con-
stitute the group of war neurotics. During the war, there were
whole masses of them to be seen. The fully developed illness showed
generalized tremors, inability to walk or stand, combined with very
strong feelings of dread when movement was forcibly imposed upon
them. Another group showed remarkable anomalies of posture, com-
pulsive attitudes or various paralyses. The majority of these ill-
nesses arose as a result of shock, especially in bomb shocks. It
appeared to some, as to the leading German neurologist, H. Oppen-
heim, that all these phenomena were to be regarded as organic
disturbances. It was his opinion that these conditions were based
on changes induced in the central nervous system by the shock
which consisted in a loosening of the extraordinarily fine textures
of the tissues and in the breaking up of the paths which the
impulses of innervation had formerly traversed.

Contrasted with this, were many cases in which there were no
organic changes, that the morbid condition had arisen in the ab-
sence of any injury and, finally, that the majority of cases could
be helped by psychological influences like hypnosis or suggestion.
Others sought to explain the cause of the morbid condition by a
spiritual experience attributable to fright. As a matter of fact, it

2i4 THE SEXUAL HISTORY OF THE WORLD WAR

had very frequently been observed that at great natural catas-
trophes like earthquakes, or accidents like railway collisions, the
people involved reacted with attitudes that are well known as
biological fundamental types of conduct among the lower forms
of life such as insects. These are elementary reactions like the
"opossum reflex" in which the animal becomes immobile, or the
"storm of movements" which is a tendency to flee from danger
through incessant and apparently undirected motion. Before we
consider the attempt which psychoanalysis has made to answer the
question as to the origin of war neuroses and to bridge over the two
theories of shock and fear, we wish to say something concerning
the classification of these diseases which we also owe to psycho-
analysis. According to this division, there are two types: conversion
hysteria and fear neurosis.

In the work of Bartlett, entitled Psychology in the Soldier, we
find a serviceable and popular description of the genesis of the
first type, conversion hysteria, whose symptoms were the paralysis
and compulsive postures already mentioned.

"The soldier became hysterical not because he got something
queer into his head, but because in the totality of interests which
normally constituted his personality, there was no place for war
or, in general, anything which threatened to destroy the plan of
his life. All through his life he had been accustomed to react,
simply and immediately, to situations as they arose but now this
was impossible for him. Were he now to react in accordance with
his past custom, the first thing he would do would be to desert,
but this would draw upon him serious punishment whereas if he
remained in the army the chances were at least uncertain. Hence
he continually lived in the situation which contained the strongest
provocation to flight, but which, at the same time, offered him no
simple method for realizing his desire. However, a day would come
when suddenly, as the result of the explosion of a bomb or the
violent death of a friend, or occasionally without any cause at all,
he would sustain a wound which would solve his conflict. This
was no physical injury. It did assume physical form but the body
of this soldier was sufficiently healthy. Only he had become hys-
terical. We call this man a 'conversion hysteric' because he has
converted the psychological inclination to flight into the physical
symptom in which it comes to expression."

Another example of conversion hysteria is the case mentioned
by Ferenczi of the soldier with chronic cramp of the left leg.

GENITAL INJURIES, WAR EUNUCHS, ETC. 215

This man had once been climbing down very cautiously from a
steep mountain in Serbia and had just put his left foot forward to
seek some support when suddenly there was a tremendous ex-
plosion which sent him rolling down the mountain. The symptom
of the conversion hysteria is, in this case as in every other, a com-
pulsive attitude which, so to speak, maintains the nerve impulse
dominant at the moment of the shock or accident.

The second group of war neuroses, or fear hysteria, was char-
acterized by generalized tremor and disturbances of walking. This
tremor set in when the patient made his first attempts to walk after
a long rest cure which was presumed to have cured him of the
complete paralysis he had had before. In all these cases it was
a question of an overwhelming experience, a so-called psychic
trauma, against the repetition of which the patient unconsciously
sought to shield himself by manifesting terrific anxiety each time
there seemed to be any danger of a recurrence of that painful
experience. The inability to stand and walk was a certain method
of preventing such experiences from recurring inasmuch as it made
impossible any sort of movement. This anxiety, which came to
expression also in nightmares, had even earlier come to be re-
garded as a typical symptom of "anxiety neuroses" in which group
we must classify the second type of war neuroses.

While an attempt was made to deduce both types of war neu-
roses, on the one hand from mechanical injury or shock, and
on the other from the experience of terror, the psychoanalysts and
many physicians who were not members of this school, such as
Nonne, Liepmann and Schuster, maintained the psychogenetic
standpoint, according to which it was the psychological working
over of affective experiences which induced the mental illness.
This conception was the only one that could answer the question
why only some of the men who had all undergone the same ex-
periences and the same terrors would show neurotic reactions.
According to this theory, neither the physical nor the spiritual
trauma was decisive but only the personal and individual reaction.
The psychoanalytic school attempted, therefore, to answer the
question as to what sort of reaction was necessary in order to
produce the morbid mental condition. The war neuroses were des-
ignated as typically narcissistic experiences. That is, the assump-
tion was made that in all the psychopaths under consideration
there was some injury to the ego, some wounding of self-love (of
narcissism). The natural consequence of this injury to the ego was

2i6 THE SEXUAL HISTORY OF THE WORLD WAR

An American Red Cross Poster Widely Distributed in France During

the War

the cessation of the ability to love anyone else than oneself, or,
more technically, the diminution of the object-relationship of the
libido. These students could point to cases in which the narcissistic
retrogression had gone so far that patients behaved like little chil-
dren; they prattled, desired to be caressed, etc. K. Abraham had a
case where the patient behaved like a two-year-old child and con-
tinually muttered, "Mine, bums." This obviously a reversion to
infantilism, which, in the language of psychoanalysis, was termed
"regression."

These preliminary remarks were necessary in order to under-
stand what follows concerning the relation between war neuroses
and sexuality. Even though the narcissistic origin of war neuroses
was not doubted by any of the psychoanalysts, they, neverthe-
less emphasized the strong participation of the sexual factor.
Ferenczi has called our attention to the fact that many a shock,
which in itself had nothing to do with the realm of the sexual,
resulted in diminished sexual libido and even in impotence. It was
not at all impossible that normal shocks should lead to neuroses by
the way of sexual disturbances. Impotence, which seemed a trivial
symptom of traumatic neuroses, not infrequently turned out to be

GENITAL INJURIES, WAR EUNUCHS, ETC. 217

important when a fuller explanation of the patho-genesis of the
malady had been revealed.

Abraham has emphasized the fact that war neuroses generally
overtook men who in peace times were labile and uncertain in their
sexual relationships with women, that is, men with diminished
libido and potency. Among such men, who from youth have strong
narcissistic components and libido fixation (that is they love them-
selves so much that it is impossible for them to achieve other
than temporary relations with the opposite sex) traumatic— in the
psychoanalytic jargon, narcissistic — neuroses occur quite easily.

The unconscious psychological process, which was reflected in
the rise of neurotic disturbances during the war, leads us to the
problem of stimulation. No matter how little doubt there was
about the unconscious character of these processes, there were,
nevertheless, physicians in every land who held that the patient,
especially the neurotic ones, were personally responsible for their
diseases. There was a shocking underestimation of the devastating
psychological effects of the war. The attitude of many patriotic
physicians to the hospital inmates and, especially to the unfortu-
nates afflicted with tremors, forms another dark chapter in the
history of the World War. The adage that "only a good man can
be a good physician" was not always applicable during the war,
for, very frequently, both at the conscription of the soldier and at
his discharge from the hospital, the physician was frequently tied
hand and foot by rules based entirely on military necessity. So in
recruiting men for the army, the physician was required to declare
a definite percentage of the applicants fit for war service; and
similarly he was required to send back to the battlefield a certain
definite proportion of patients under his care in the hospital. These
abuses became chronic in the last years of the war because of the
great dearth of soldiers among the Central powers. These condi-
tions became so bad that German statistics for 19 15 showed the
following figures: Of all the soldiers treated in the hospital of the
German home territories, 90.2 per cent were declared fit for
continued service, 1.4 per cent died and 8.4 per cent remained
unfit for service or were furloughed. Now it would be a very
happy sign of the progress of medicine in Germany were these
figures true, but, alas, the situation was quite otherwise.

These abuses, inhumanly dictated by the necessities of warfare,
were fulfilled by the physicians assigned to the performance of
these duties by the military authorities, and in many cases the

2i8 THE SEXUAL HISTORY OF THE WORLD WAR

brutality of the medical men exceeded that of the military leaders.
We might mention, as an example of this, the famous Kaufmann
method, a sad remembrance of those dismal times, a consideration
of which will round out our account of war neuroses. Since the
ultimate ground for war neuroses is, as we have seen, to be sought
in the individual psychological working over of experiences, it
seemed natural to assume that these maladies could be dealt with
by psychical methods of therapy. Thus Simmel solved the question
of treatment in these cases by the use of psycho-catharsis or
hypnosis, through which the patient was made aware of the cir-
cumstances which had caused his difficulties. As opposed to this,
the Kaufmann method was, as its inventor himself designated it,
a "surprise method" and proceeded in the following manner: Start-
ing from the experience that very frequently innervations which
had been torn from their proper paths by fright were frequently
restored by renewed psychic fright, Kaufmann suggested the fol-
lowing elements of treatment: i. suggestive preparations — emphasis
of the fact that the treatment would be painful but that a com-
plete cure would ensue as a result of the one sitting, and would
remain permanent; 2. the use of strong alternating current accom-
panied by verbal suggestion; 3. strict maintenance of the military
form, the use of the relation of subordination, and the issuing of
suggestions in the form of commands as sharp and crisp as though
they were being called out in a military camp; 4. the consequent
forcing of the cure in one sitting.

It is well known how faithfully these rules were obeyed. Char-
acteristic of the whole procedure is a case studied by Dr. Hirsch-
feld in which a soldier with a strong sadistic inclination greedily
seized every opportunity to be present at such a seance. Although,
in general, the relations between physician and patient were the
same in all armies, Kaufmann's suggestions somehow found a
greater number of admirers in the Austrian army than elsewhere.
The psychoanalytic writer, Fritz Wittels, has given us a very clear
picture of the brutality of these Austrian medicos who were ad-
dicted to the "Kaufmann technique," in his humorous war novel,
Zacharias Pamperl:

"These gentry of the Vienna military hospitals used electrical
machines of the sort that are used in America for murderers, and
they tickled the defenders of the fatherland so long and so vio-
lently until they had no choice other than suicide or return to the
battlefield. In addition, they injected emetics into these patients so

GENITAL INJURIES, WAR EUNUCHS, ETC. 219

that these poor creatures spewed their very souls out of their body
and preferred rather to die for their fatherland than live that
nauseated tortuous existence. Maria Theresa abolished tortures, but
the nerve doctors reintroduced them during the World War."

In the Austrian army, military and medical authorities were
especially prone to see in every psychopath, especially such as had
gotten into the hospitals, malingerers. In his great drama of the
war, Karl Krauss has depicted a scene in the hospital which may
seem exaggerated to us today but was certainly the brutal truth at
that time. A group of men, including wounded and dying, together
with a military physician, are gathered in one of the hospital wards.
One of the chief physicians of the general staff suddenly enters
and, with the utmost brusqueness and bluster, shouts out that now
that all the malingerers are together he will be able to give them a
piece of his mind. At these words a number of the patients manifest
grave nervous symptoms. After bidding them remain quiet and
make no demonstrations, he orders the younger physician to bring
out the electrical apparatus, the better to detect the simulators. As
the physician approaches some of the beds with the apparatus, a
number of the patients get convulsions. The brutal physician-in-
chief turns to one corner of the room and gives expression to the
feeling that a particularly miserable patient lying there is guilty of
lack of patriotism. This poor man, terrified out of his wits, there-
upon begins to shriek. At this the chief inquisitor remarks that for
creatures of this sort, there is only one cure, to put them all into a
caisson and expose them to an unceasing rain of the enemy's fire.
That, he opines, would put an end to their tremors, and with that
he stalks out of the room, banging the door after him. At this last
report one patient dies.

In view of these practices, it is not difficult to understand the
horror with which the public reacted to the reports of the torture
chambers of the psychiatric wards of the Viennese hospitals, which
came to public expression in Vienna despite the vigilance of the
military authorities. In a lecture on the subject of war neuroses to
the public, Professor Schiiller expressed the opinion that whenever
a physician used active methods and exercised pressure upon a
patient to elicit from him a statement relative to his readiness to
return to the front, such action proceeded from the mistaken view
that the goal of treatment was in every case the restoration of fit-
ness for military service. The primary duty of physicians, Pro-
fessor Schiiller reminded his audience, was the restoration to the

220

THE SEXUAL HISTORY OF THE WORLD WAR

neurotic of such a degree of health as would enable him to make
his way about in the world and also to return to military service.
Schuller denied, however, that there was any truth in the accusa-
tion that neurologists were always seeing illustrations of soldiering
and asserted that the best proof of the innocence of the physicians
in these matters was the small number of court cases for malinger-
ing; moreover, he insisted that if neurologists were so bent on
finding malingerers everywhere they wouldn't have had to resort
to the use of the Kaufmann method. At the same time he strongly
condemned the Kaufmann method as a fake device which did
not cure but rather substituted one disease for another. Dr. Kurt
Mendel was much more courageous and wrote that sick soldiers
were not to be treated like uncouth children, since physicians were
not officers and hospitals not garrisons. It is interesting to relate
that the worthy psychiatrist later regretted his very righteous in-
dignation on this matter and stated literally, Pater, peccavi.

There were two other treatments available for war neuroses.
The first, introduced by O. Muck, was scarcely more gentle than
that of Kaufmann. Those patients who had fallen a prey to ophonia,
that is, who had lost their voices as a result of a nervous disturb-
ance, had inserted into their larynx a metal ball about one centi-
meter in diameter. This had the effect of bringing out the patient's
cry of terror before it was smothered within him. The second
method employed the device of making the patient think he was
going to be operated on and actually administering an anesthetic
to him, but, of course, no operation was performed. It appeared
that this last method, which was comparatively humane, did achieve
a considerable measure of success with its suggestive methods. But
the most radical cure for these victims of the war was brought
by peace. In an essay concerning the ending of the war and the
general question of neuroses, K. Singer remarked that as soon as
peace came, the tremendous tension of these patients was ended.
The reaction was a violent one and had the effect of an emotional
shock. Peace became the best Kaufmannizing of the soul without
any electricity, and was the most brilliant solution by a quasi-
suggestive method without any real suggestion. It seems unbeliev-
able that voices were raised against the giving to neurotics of cer-
tificates indicating that they had been wounded; and B. C. Loewy
even stated that such a procedure would not be justified morally.

To conclude this whole question of malingering, let us state that
the search for shirkers was not altogether unjustified, despite the

GENITAL INJURIES, WAR EUNUCHS, ETC. 221

fact that there seemed to be few cases of actual simulation during
the war. Only rarely did the soldier rely upon his own ability to
simulate. Much more frequently, however, he took definite steps
to acquire a disease or to injure himself in one way or another.
More often than was known, suicide made its appearance as a wel-
come salvation from a hero's death, and it appears to have been
particularly widespread in the English army. Yet cases of this sort
were not unknown in the Austrian army. One, reported in a
Vienna medical weekly, told of a twenty-seven-year-old soldier who
had swallowed a key and a spoon with suicidal intent. To this
group also belonged those men who refused to be operated upon,
individuals who, as Finsterer demonstrated, achieved the same re-
sults by their inactivity as those who inflicted injuries upon them-
selves— the possibility of escaping service at the front. It is note-
worthy, however, that while those who inflicted actual injuries on
themselves were punishable, sometimes by death, a man's refusal
to give his permission for an operation that was necessary was
not punishable, and was even justified by the law. But, as a matter
of fact, this rule stating that a man could be operated on only after
he had given his consent, (such consent was also necessary for the
amputation of a limb) was sometimes violated, especially in the case
of common soldiers.

The practice of inflicting injuries upon oneself was common in
every army. Egon Erwin Kisch has preserved for us one such
incident where three men who had injured themselves were led
into a division court trembling with cold and pain. One of them
had shattered his left wrist, a second had shot off two fingers, and
the third had shot his left shoulder. All three were bleeding pro-
fusely through the crude bandages which they had applied them-
selves. There was no defense that these men could make before
the court inasmuch as the shots were all on the left side of the
body and hence accessible to their own firearms; furthermore, the
wounds showed powder-burns, typical in cases where the shot has
been fired at close range. In Serbia it was much easier, for there one
had only to lift a hand out of the trench for when one sustained an
injury to the fingers, it was considered an honorable wound. When
these people wished to inflict gun wounds upon themselves, they
carefully placed a handkerchief dipped in wine over the area they
were going to shoot. This precaution conceals all powder-burns.

Often these self-injuries consisted in willingly exposing oneself
to a contagious disease. Even English girls who had been driven

222 THE SEXUAL HISTORY OF THE WORLD WAR

across the channel by the patriotism of their parents and had dis-
covered, when they arrived at the front and begun to serve as
nurses and chauffeurs and auxiliaries, that war was not the delight-
ful game it had been cracked up to be, resorted to such practices.
Thus Helen Zenna Smith informed us that one of the girl drivers
of her company was suddenly stricken with a dangerous form of
measles. She had acquired this disease in some mysterious way. Four
of her comrades, who knew very well what was the trouble with
their friend, crept into her flea sack before it had been disinfected,
in the hope of getting the infection which would mean hospitaliza-
tion and a chance to sleep and rest for a few weeks.

To the thoroughness of Professor Exner's investigation we owe
a detailed list of the forms of self-injury common in the Austrian
army, a list which is a tragic reflection on the inhumanity of war.
The following are some of the injuries inflicted by the soldiers
upon themselves to escape military service: artificially produced
hernia, irritations and inflammations of the skin, scalding, with
resulting inflammation, artificially produced eczema, jaundice
(through picric acid), inflammation of the eyes, inflammation and
infection of the external ear and of the urethra (through foreign
bodies), naive simulation of gonorrhea through soapsuds, purpose-
ful transfer to oneself of trachoma and gonorrhea, inflammations
of the kidney and bladder, frostbites and freezing, swelling of limbs
(through tight lacing or ligation), insertion of needles into limbs,
hemorrhoids (through drastic purgatives and local irritants), and
by preventing the healing process through irritation of the sick area.

In these tables of Dr. Exner, concerning the self-infliction of
wounds or diseases, an inordinately large part is played by venereal
diseases. In view of the relations which existed everywhere behind
the front and at the halting-stations, it was comparatively easy to
obtain an infection of this sort and very frequent use was made of
this opportunity. It need not be emphasized that this type of self-
injury was dangerous, as has been shown in the chapter on venereal
diseases. Among every army, but particularly among the Austrians,
this conduct was punished whenever it was discovered and, from
the point of view of the military authorities, not unjustifiably.
However, these penalties did not accomplish their purpose and as
the war was prolonged the number of cases of self-inflicted venereal
diseases increased rather than diminished. It was a matter of indif-
ference in these cases whether the infection had been derived from
a woman or from a comrade. In Koppen's Army Report we find a

GENITAL INJURIES, WAR EUNUCHS, ETC. 223

very amusing description of the trial of a soldier who had sinned
in this regard. Major Klemper was chairman of the court and the
accused was Rodnick, a cannoneer. The following conversation
ensued:

Major K.: "Tell us just what happened."
The accused remained silent.

Major K.: "Well, then are we to assume that you cohabited with
this woman in spite of the fact that you knew she was venereally
diseased?"

Rod.: "If you please, Herr Major, no."

Major K.: "What do you mean, no, you didn't do it or you
didn't know?"

Rod.: "I wasn't acquainted with the girl."

Gen. S.: "Rodnick, if you are going to lie I'm going to incar-
cerate you at once. Here, Major, is a report from the division
physician certifying that this man has a severe gonorrhea."

Major K.: "Do you want me to believe, you rascal, that you got
all this from playing with that girl? If you don't tell me the truth
you're going to prison at once. Now where did you get that
gonorrhea?"

Rod.: "In a hospital."

Gen. S.: "That's a lie! You were never there."

Rod.: "No, general — but here— from that place."

Gen. S.: "Now, Rodnick, don't talk nonsense. You know me well
enough to talk to me. I will not be deceived, so, in your own
interest, tell me the story."

Rod.: "I bought it. . . ."

Major K.: "Bought what? The girl?"

Rod.: "No, Herr Major, gonorrhea. From an infantryman. But
others did it, too. This fellow was sick with gonorrhea — and if you
gave him a mark he would sell you a little bit — a little bit of pus.
And if you smeared this on at once . . ."

Gen. S.: "You say others did this, too? How many more in your
battery?"

Rod.: "When I was there, there were five more."

In conclusion we quote a small selection from one of the best
German war books, Frey's Plasterboxes:

"That fellow Kobisch had a perfect case of gonorrhea and had
to go to the hospital. Where had he got it? It was necessary to
know this in order to stamp out the infection. Kobisch had too
little imagination to invent a momentary embrace in some hidden

224 THE SEXUAL HISTORY OF THE WORLD WAR

corner. What is more, such a yarn would have been impossible for
the regiment had not been anywhere near women for a long time.
Hence, driven into a tight place, the poor fellow had to admit that
he had gotten it from another chap who had returned from a fur-
lough the previous week. Before this furloughed soldier, laden
with all the toxins of the big city, had been assigned to a hospital,
he had given Kobisch, in return for two marks, a bit of his gonor-
rheal flux wherewith the latter had anointed his organ. . . . A
very popular procedure was the production of a physical condi-
tion which would cause the physician to suspect the existence of
a fresh lues. In some way this information had leaked out to the
troops from a hospital and many men knew how to induce the
irritation that looked like a fresh lues. A pastille of corrosive sub-
limate was placed under the prepuce. This caused terrific pain and
in a very short time a strong inflammation appeared which caused
the physician to send back to the hinterland these men whose
genitals appeared syphilitic. The terrific pains were worth it, be-
cause as a result, one was able to have a few weeks of rest and
leisure and to escape the dangers of war. There was a very lively
traffic carried on with these pills and men tried to obtain them in
any way possible— by stealing, buying or having them sent from

home." .., .

In this connection something should be said concerning life in
the hospital We have already considered this question, insofar as
it is related to the history of morals, in the chapter on nurses.
Certainly the inmates of the hospitals, even in those cases where
they achieved some measure of healing, were not the most enviable
of the creatures who stood behind the battle lines. Behind the
romanticism of hospital loves and marriages with nurses (which
were frequently due to a far from romantic cause, inasmuch as
unmarried patients were much more likely to be sent back to the
battlefield than married ones), behind this whole deceptive facade
there were concealed the most terrible pains which human beings
had inflicted upon each other. Added to that, there was the special
martyrdom of the military hospital where the inmate, despite the
fact that he was sick or wounded, did not cease to be a soldier
The military division of rank was maintained in the hospital ward
and even came to expression in the matter of treatment. The com-
mon soldier was, in this regard also, merely one of the mass whose
treatment was just as unvarying as the uniform that he wore bo,
for example, among the Americans, morphine was given to soldiers

GENITAL INJURIES, WAR EUNUCHS, ETC. 225

who complained of pains and after the patient had gotten his
injection there was painted upon his forehead "M" (morphine) to
insure that he would not receive more than the dose assigned for
the common soldier. In the Austrian hospitals, only the officers
were entitled to have their pains eased by the application of mor-
phine. There was also the uniform use of the cheap surgical panacea,
iodine.

The whole hospital, with all the romanticism that has been con-
jured up about it and the real misery contained within, was con-
tinually shadowed by death. From it a way generally led directly,
or indirectly through the return to the battlefield, to the cemetery.
The hospital returned to life only such people who had left their
limbs or their health behind its walls.

Chapter 13

SEX LIFE OF WAR PRISONERS

Woman and the Prisoners-of-War— Revenge for the Blockade— Refined
Destruction of War Prisoners—Sadism Triumphant— Effects of Sex Hun-
ter—Significance as a Mass Phenomenon— Love Among War Prisoners—
Their Wives Back Home— Sex Exploitation of War Prisoners— Prevalence
of Masturbation— Other Substitute Satisfactions— Homosexual Intercourse
—Female Impersonators as Mistresses

THE inhumanity of war finds its expression not only in the casu-
alty lists, but also in the millions of war prisoners who for years led
an existence more or less miserable. It is true that to be a prisoner-
of-war meant that one was removed from the direct danger of war
at the front, but to make up for that one was exposed to other and
scarcely lighter dangers to health and life. Generally these victims
of the war had to pay very dearly for the fact that they remained
behind the bloody scene of front operations. We cannot take up
here in any detail the ineffable sufferings of millions of war pris-
oners whose experiences fill whole departments of the extensive
literature of the war. Suffice it to say that the innumerable cruelties
which, for political reasons, were during the war perpetrated
against hundreds of thousands of these unfortunate men, cannot be
regarded as accidents or exceptions, but as an institution which
follows logically from the nature of war. This institutional abuse
of millions is an undeniable sadistic trait of a society that wages
war. In every land myriads were swept away by epidemics which
could have been prevented or controlled. As a result of the unex-
pectedly protracted duration of the war and the equally unexpected
size of the contingent of prisoners, all the humane prescriptions of
international law, which pre-war pacifism had done so much to
establish, proved to be completely illusory. In every land, a policy
of destruction was exercised against the masses of the prisoners-of-
war; but it remained for a German economist, whose name we
had better cover with silence, to espouse the systematic destruction
of war prisoners as the only possible answer to the blockade en-
forced by the Allies against Germany. In addition to the whole
institution which has a mass murder character, there was no lack
of single instances, which showed all the earmarks of sadistic
cruelty. The prisoners-of-war were completely at the mercy of
the military authorities or such persons as the latter might have
appointed, and they were completely exposed to the tender mercy

226

SEX LIFE OF WAR PRISONERS

227

of the enemy who now had them in his power. It cannot be won-
dered at, therefore, that this utter dependence, this veritable slavery
induced by the war, which is even a step beyond the customary
relationship of subordination that obtains in all armies, released
all the sadistic instincts of the modern slave holders, very re-
quently raw and ignorant soldiers who were free to dispose of the
lives of their slaves. Today it is no longer possible to state how
many of those whose bones now moulder in foreign soil, fell a
victim to such sadists intoxicated with the consciousness of power.

The question that concerns us most is the one related to the
sexual life of the prisoners. As might be expected, there was a
tremendous sexual starvation raging wherever groups of men had
been living for a long time away from women and without any
possibility of intercourse with the opposite sex. The consequences
were the same as appear in normal times as a result of imprison-
ment and which have become known to large groups of people
since the end of the war, thanks to the frequent literary treatment
of this problem (as in Jakob Wasserman's masterful, The Case
Maurizius) but especially through the work of Karl Plattner and
the film, Sex in Chains, issued by the German League for Human
Rights. Still, there were two factors which differentiated the civilian
prisoners in peace times from the war prisoners. While it was true
that both groups were robbed of the opportunity of normal sexual
living, the numbers of men affected during the war were enor-
mous. In Russia alone, there were over two million men of the
Central powers who suffered from sex hunger for longer or shorter
periods of time. A second consequence was that inasmuch as sex
hunger was now a mass phenomenon, it lost all moral justification
with which public opinion had been wont to help itself out in the
case of prisoners during peace time: that since the prisoners were
anti-social, dangerous men, criminals in short, there was certainly
no need to worry about whatever sufferings might come to them
from sex hunger; indeed, the latter could be considered a part of
the deserved punishment.

Since imprisonment during the war was not a novelty but only
magnified the consequences previously known to an enormous de-
gree and in a way which did not permit of any moral justifica-
tion, we wish to deal briefly with a few of the most typical factors
and to illustrate them with examples from literature and private
communications.

For those prisoners-of-war who did not live in concentration

228 THE SEXUAL HISTORY OF THE WORLD WAR

camps and enjoyed a relative degree of freedom and work, there
was naturally no sex hunger. This was especially the case in the
Central states which made use of the work power of their prisoners
in order to release every one of their own men for fighting duty,
and in Russia. The relations of the prisoners in these lands and in
certain cases in the other lands as well, belongs to the theme on
love among war prisoners, which we have already considered. It
may be asserted that in these cases there came to expression much
more the sex hunger of the enemy soldiers' wives than that of the
prisoners-of-war. As an example of this sort we may mention a
report from the Austrian countryside, printed in the papers of
Innesbruck during 191 5, which dealt with the amorous escapades
of Austrian women with Russian prisoners-of-war. In certain towns
these prisoners confessed that these women had made up to the
Russian prisoners-of-war in a way that argued a complete lack of
any sense of shame. The physician of the large Russian barracks
at Wenns, a Dr. Jenschitz, protested against the accusation that
had been leveled against the morality of the Russian soldiers and
asserted, contrariwise, that it was impossible to restrain the women
of Wenns from tearing into the barracks at night; and that in
many cases the Russian soldiers had proved themselves morally
superior to these women. Moreover, the chaplain of a district near
Wenns publicly expressed his chagrin at the fact that many of the
girls who had formerly gone to his school were now consorting
with the foreign soldiers.

The same conclusions about the love experiences of prisoners-
of-war can be derived from a German publication which produced
a sensation upon its appearance, Woman and Prisoners-of-War. In
the Allied territories, where German and Austrian prisoners were
much more carefully guarded and nearly always held in closed
barracks, the relations of native women to these prisoners were
much less common, but by no means unknown. This pamphlet
asserted that while German prisoners were treated with consider-
able brutality in France, they were extraordinarily welcome to the
passionate French woman for whom the absence of normal sex
intercourse was a source of considerable pain. In the vast majority
of cases, according to the testimony of most of these war prisoners,
the French woman was only concerned with the merciless physical
exploitation of the German war prisoner in a sexual way. Despite
the fact that the English authorities adopted very strict measures,
there were numerous possibilities for striking up acquaintances;

SEX LIFE OF WAR PRISONERS 229

and the soft-heartedness of many camp commandants afforded
ample room for intimate relationships. Naturally such things could
not be cultivated inside of the concentration camps, but on the
other side of the wire fence, English girls would frequently be at
hand despite all the prohibitions against it, to watch the German
soldiers at their games, to listen to their music, or to hear their
yearning folk songs. When these soldiers were detailed to various
agricultural duties, love relations very frequently developed. Gen-
erally the English sentries had but little sympathy for this inclina-
tion on the part of their sisters who were showing far less than
the proper degree of patriotism. A goodly streak of jealousy made
these soldiers hard and inconsiderate so that very frequently they
brought public accusation against such girls. This sometimes re-
sulted in prison sentences for these girls.

Though these phenomena differ in their extent, they are every-
where analogous and point to one definite and clear-cut reason.
The love shown to prisoners-of-war by enemy women was due to
the sex starvation of the women of every land caused by the ab-
sence of men. Stekel's attempt to explain this phenomenon in purely
psychological terms as a decisive turning away on the part of
women from the masculine conception of war is, to say the least,
exaggerated, especially when we consider the almost maniacal en-
thusiasm for war evinced by the women of every land. Still, it
cannot be doubted that the love shown by these women to the
prisoners-of-war did have an influence in the direction of peace.
This manifests why the military and civil authorities were so con-
cerned to oppress such alliances. Their functions were to sustain
the enthusiasm for war. There is much truth in the following state-
ment of Koppen:

"Despite the prohibitions, when evening came, human beings
could be found lying in the frozen woods near the city, in aban-
doned huts and in stables, with their bodies pressed close to each
other, hungry for a bit of tenderness. There was a German woman
and a French man, a German woman and an Englishman, Russian
or Negro. For a few seconds there was no war, no fatherland, no
German, French, English nor Russian; for a few seconds the mur-
der machine stopped, for a few seconds there was a German woman
and a man whose language she did not understand, and they were
to each other simply man and woman."

But we have already considered the love life of the woman dur-
ing war and we wish to turn now to the sex hunger of the prisoners-

230 THE SEXUAL HISTORY OF THE WORLD WAR

of-war. This condition was everywhere to be found where inter-
course with the civil population was difficult or impossible and
this was true even of certain areas of Russia, for the treatment
of war prisoners there was by no means uniform. Whereas in
Turkestan and at the Persian boundary the officers of the Central
powers were very welcome in Russian society, in Siberia the civil
population was prohibited from even speaking to the prisoners-
of-war and severe punishments were threatened for infractions of
this law. But no matter how closely these barbed wire concentra-
tion camps were guarded, there are always ways and means of
procuring a woman. The officers could, of course, bribe their guards,
and under the pretense of having to make certain necessary pur-
chases, would be conveyed to the nearest city where there were
bath houses and Stundenhotels available. In other cases, women
were put into water barrels or were disguised as sentries and
smuggled in that way; after they had once gotten in they would
remain in the camp for several days. Dwinger has reported a
Russian camp commandant by being turned over to the whole
company of six hundred men. This does not appear to have been a
rare case. Elsewhere, as for example, on the Chinese border, some
enterprising fellows erected dirty little brothels on the edge of the
encampments. The inmates were Chinese, Mongolian or Tartar
women, who imparted to their guests, among other things, the
particularly feared Siberian lues. Another possibility of coming
into contact with women was afforded by the hospitals for pris-
oners-of-war. It was held to be particularly true of Russian nurses
(and also of the English) that they were very willing to enter
into intimate relations with their prisoner patients. Everybody
knows how fond the Russian woman, especially of the educated
classes — and these nurses were practically all recruited from these
classes and from the nobility — were of the West Europeans in
general. Hence it is quite credible that Breitner's report was true
when he asserted that all the nurses of a hospital for war prisoners
in which he was working, were pregnant after the first year of
the war.

Where the possibilities of normal intercourse were lacking over
a long period of time, the sex hunger of the war prisoners assumed
terrifying proportions. In the very center of the idle, almost coma-
tose existence of the camp stood sexuality and women about whom
all conversations, dreams and thoughts revolved. Dwinger, whose
wonderful book, The Army Behind Barbed Wire, has given the

SEX LIFE OF WAR PRISONERS

231

most living and reliable account of these matters in the most artistic
way, has described these conditions in the following manner:

"I once believed that in a concentration camp for prisoners the
chief concern should be to maintain the bodily health of prisoners;
but I learnt that spiritual corruption was not only more dangerous
but also more difficult to combat. What was left to us? Nothing
besides imagination. . . . That was our green wood, our refuge. . . .
But this forest was always peopled by girls. Whatever we spoke or
dreamt about always revolved about that for which we were most
hungry, namely, woman. More and more our imagination became
inflamed. The natural things no longer sufficed and even satisfac-
tion was no longer able to extinguish the fire within us which
blazed the hotter the more impossible it was for us to realize any of
the fantasies which swarmed through our brain. . . . Some began
to relate dreams that they had had of rape, and others spoke of the
most monstrous abnormalities. If the first woman who will fall to
our lot after this time will not be able to heal and cool us wisely
and lovingly, we shall remain abnormal for our whole life, and our
homeland will be flooded by an ocean of perversity."

The temptation to onanism was naturally greatest when the
prisoner not only inflamed his imagination with thoughts and con-
versations, but also had the opportunity of seeing women, whether
from near or far, and had no other way of getting release from his
sexual tension. A simple soldier who was once a war prisoner of
Italy wrote us that he had much less difficulty in fighting with his
sexual hunger as a soldier than in his imprisonment, because in the
latter condition he was constantly able to see pretty women but
always prevented from having any contact with them. This man's
communication to us contains a most illuminating account of how
he became an onanist during his imprisonment. One day a detach-
ment was commandeered to perform some work at Piave di Tecco.
While they were in the city, he saw a very pretty girl of about
seventeen riding on a donkey and admired her greatly as did his
comrades. That night he was unable to sleep and again and again
his thoughts reverted to that pretty girl. He tossed from side to
side but was unable to find rest. "When midnight came I was still
awake and suddenly during my tossing I turned on my stomach
for a moment. A convulsive feeling came over me, my senses began
to spin. Wildly I tore a hole in the straw sack, all the while think-
ing of that girl. Soon I fell into a deep sleep. The next day I ob-
served that my organ was lacerated from the stiff straw. I re-

232 THE SEXUAL HISTORY OF THE WORLD WAR

proached myself furiously for this piece of adolescent folly but to no
avail. Several weeks later I saw a pretty seamstress and the same
thing happened again. Finally onanism became a habit with me."

Naturally, in this sultry atmosphere of onanism imposed by the
complete deprivation of normal sex outlets, all shame went by the
board. This is made abundantly clear in the following communi-
cation :

"During the winter we were without work for a number of
weeks. Every morning we arose with the outward signs of passion,
but no one knew what to do about it. Many of the boys slept only
in their shirts, so that frequently one would jokingly pull up the
shirt of his comrade, and make free with one another in this state
of semi-nudity, amid the general laughter. One evening the young-
est of the boys said to his companion, a married man, 'Hey, how
was it when you first slept with your wife?' And he went on to
add that he himself had never had anything to do with women.
Immediately his comrades fell upon him, undressed him and abused
his genitals. The sentries came running in answer to his cries, but
when they saw what was happening they joined in the laughter."

Erotic conversations of this sort, which frequently went on for
years, had been used by Leonhard Frank as material for his unfor-
gettable work, Karl and Anna. With deeply moving power and
profound knowledge of the human soul, the author constructs a
tragedy from the conversations between two prisoners-of-war, one
of whom falls in love with the wife of the other as the result of
tales told by her husband concerning her; and later on, when
this friend is released from prison before the husband, he goes to
that woman and takes the place of her husband until his return.
That the plot of Frank's book is psychologically possible is proven
by a similar case in Dwinger. Here a lieutenant who was convers-
ing with the author drew out a photograph of a girl and showed
it to him. The latter asked whether the woman was the lieutenant's
wife and was informed that he did not even know her but that she
was the bride of a comrade who had died of typhus. However, he
went on to explain, it was now his intention to marry her when he
got home and for two years now he had been dreaming of this girl.

Among the other substitute satisfactions we must mention the
"graphic projections." How much that was drawn or painted in
prison had an erotic note appears from the following observations
of Breitner, based on a knowledge of the pictures produced by
prisoners-of-war in their camp at Beresowka:

SEX LIFE OF WAR PRISONERS

233

"It is astounding how little productivity the imprisonment re-
leased. What little there was remained entirely in the realm of the
erotic. This merely establishes the potencies of the latter which
stand in reciprocal relation to the creative impotence of the artist.
Spiritual life is able to draw creative passion from other than
physical regions. But in our condition body and soul quivered
continually under the lash of monkhood, and we incessantly experi-
enced the bitter truth that 'passion is the dowry of woman.' That
the spirit yearned for what was denied to the body; that the crea-
tive fictitious substitute did nothing more than purvey the hotly
desired lap of the absent original, seems to me to be proof that
all primary passion belongs to the genius of the sexual. Creative
happiness in the vestments of sexual lust is for the artist, who is
compelled to live in a celibacy he chafes under, the first and most
readily available flight to lust."

A very common form of substitute satisfaction was homosexual
intercourse. In all the varied forms which sexual relations assumed
among prisoners-of-war one thing remained certain: that in these
groups there was always one real urning, whereas in other groups
sex hunger might lead to pseudo-homosexual practices. In some
cases a weak homosexual component might have become released
owing to the same causes. According to Hirschfeld's notion, pseudo-
homosexual intercourse is to be compared to ipsation or onanism,
indeed is to be regarded as a variety of the latter, and hence the
question whether the one or the other sort of substitute satisfac-
tion predominated in the war prisons is only of theoretic im-
portance. In general it is worth noting that the repugnance of
prisoners-of-war to homoerotic intercourse, who at the beginning
preferred onanism to the pseudo-homosexual substitute, decreased
as the years went by. In this sense homosexuality in the prisoners'
camps may be regarded as contagious although, as has been said, it
is of very little significance practically which of the two types of
self-satisfaction is employed.

One reason for the gradual loss of antipathy to homoerotic love
was the influence of the war prisoners' theater. Dr. Arthur Munk,
whose diary of his Russian captivity contains a number of very
interesting insights, has recorded the following concerning the
relation between homosexuality and theatricals: "The love life of
prisoners increased tremendously during 19 16. In every one of the
larger officers' camps large theaters were established. It was soon
found that of all dramatic works, operettas exercised the greatest

234 THE SEXUAL HISTORY OF THE WORLD WAR

attraction. Naturally women's roles were everywhere played by
the younger officers. In these crude theaters the same intrigues were
enacted as behind the boards of a metropolitan temple of the
muses. The prima donnas soon found themselves surrounded by
many admirers who bestowed upon them all sorts of presents: face
powders, rouge, perfume, candy and jewels. In general there was
little to criticize in the manner of life of these prima donnas. They
led a fairly decent life. Much worse, however, were the soldier
actresses of second rank and the male chorus girls who were less
interested in really serious work and who, moreover, were paid
very little. So it came about that officers of homosexual constitution
rewarded a handclasp or a smile of these artists with luxurious
banquets. Those who distinguished themselves most in this con-
nection were the Turkish officers who heaped fabulous favors
upon these soldier-actresses and who suffered most from sexual
abstinence in their imprisonment. There arose veritable love tri-
angles with scandals just as in peace times. Life in the encampment,
even without these theatricals, had brought officers together in
pairs. Every prisoner had his own bosom friend with whom he
shared his thoughts, his money, his underwear. These pairs were
always together, walked and slept together, and when they be-
haved discreetly they aroused no displeasure or antipathy. But the
older militia officers who had had an ethical and religious educa-
tion were very much disturbed when they saw these male actresses
promenading with their admirers in full view of the whole camp.
Among the dancers and other dramatic personnel, there were some
who actually had themselves supported by their admirers and
practiced all the tricks of male prostitution in order to live at the
cost of their worshipers."

The predilection which these female impersonators in the war
prisoners' theaters had for pretty female costumes has been de-
picted for us by innumerable soldiers. The joy evinced by them
when they received a new female toilette leads us to conclude that
in these cases we are certainly dealing with transvestitism. In many
cases these actresses were not only distinguished by a homosexual
constitution but also by an unmistakable transvestitism which
sought satisfaction in the way just described.

For millions of men, deprived of their freedom for many years,
onanism and homosexual intercourse were the only possibilities of
sexual expression; and we must add, to the frightful debit list of the
war, the injuries to health, the unspeakable sufferings of these war

SEX LIFE OF WAR PRISONERS

235

prisoners, as well as the coldly calculated mass murder of hundreds
of thousands of these helpless men. Those who survived their im-
prisonment are even today, for the most part, psychic invalids as a
result of the morbid stamp that those years impressed upon their
sex life. If these few instances that we have cited are not sufficient
to establish the intensity and scope of the sexual deprivations and
the miserable substitutes for a healthy sex life as the central prob-
lem of war imprisonment, we may adduce the testimony of Burg-
hard Breitner with which we will conclude this chapter:

"It is unquestionably more correct to seek the root of every
spiritual happening and every emotional experience in sex than to
seek to deny this connection. . . . Whatever I noted in the prison,
with whomsoever I spoke, everywhere the need of sex hovered
over everything and everyone. Political convictions disappeared,
views and opinions, which had long agitated us, suddenly became
meaningless, lethargy and chaos became sisters. Nothing remained.
The problem of sex has survived war and imprisonment."

Part Three

Chapter 14

AMATORY ADVENTURES OF FEMALE SPIES

Women in Secret Service— Erotic Espionage— Redl and His Homo-Erotic
Youths— Adventures of a Zoo-Sadist with a Spy— Prince Udo and his
Lost Documents— Victims, Drunk and Drugged— Brothel Inmates an Im-
portant Link— Love Conquers Espionage— Amorous Dangers of Espionage
—Venal Love Life of Women Spies— "The Turkish Delight"— On Payroll
of Every Nation— Berne, a Hot-Bed of Erotic Intrigue— The Insulted
Husband Trick— The Case of the Fraulein Doctor— From Washer-Woman
to Princess— The Strange Story of Innocentia—The Double Sex of the
Most Beautiful Spy— Mystery of the Useless Gas Masks— Spies as Mis-
tresses—Execution Intrigues— True Story of Mata Hari—Mata Hans
Famous Lovers— Professional Adventuresses and Cocottes— Hazardous
Exploits of Female Spies— Their Stange Deaths

THE connection between eroticism and espionage, with which the
following data from the pen of Dr. J. R. Spinner is concerned, is
one that has existed since Catherine of Medici.

In essence erotic espionage has remained the same and woman
has continued to play a certain role which must not be overesti-
mated. Among a hundred thousand women it will not be possible
to find more than one really efficient spy, but every third woman
is able to render minor services— to assemble, so to speak, little
pebbles of espionage and haul them from place to place. Strangely
enough, the excellence of a woman spy stands in inverse relation-
ship to the strength of her own eroticism and for this reason the
best women spies were nearly always grandes cocottes, mondaines
and demi-mondaines who had gone through the mill. These women
all bore names of great repute which were changed as often as
the occasion demanded it. The ideal type of a woman spy is the
Hollywood cultivated "film vamp"— cold, egoistic, and revengeful,
who never sees anything in man but an object of exploitation, but
who, at the same time, exerts a demoniac attraction upon him;
women, in short, who never lose their hearts or their judgment,
and for whom the titillation of amorous adventure represents an
indifferent professional gesture. These women are able to strip
from the man everything he owns in the way of money and valu-
able secrets.

We may debate for hours concerning the morality of espionage
but one simply cannot get away from the fact that it plays an

236

AMATORY ADVENTURES OF FEMALE SPIES 237

enormous part in peace and war. The shooting or hanging of spies
is therefore a military procedure which reminds one strongly of
the medieval murders of prisoners-of-war. War spies had to be
shot, or slain in some other way, in order to discourage others.

The object of espionage is to find out about the enemy what he
is trying to conceal. In order to get possession of the desired docu-
ments or photographs, a preliminary investigation of the personnel
and the place which have to be worked with is made. Then plans
are drawn as to the best method of getting the secrets. If, as a
result of this preliminary investigation of a military official, it turns
out that he is amenable to erotic adventures, then a woman, cal-
culated to suit his taste, is thrown his way. This woman is expected
to develop a liaison with the military official with the express pur-
pose of extracting the secret or required document. This is one of
the chief functions of the great erotically active pre-war spies, and
this also enables us to understand the character of the grande
cocotte who plies her trade at famous baths, race tracks, gambling
institutions, international resorts, etc., whenever she is not on a
special mission. These ladies are able to sift the wheat from the
chaff and have no objection to giving themselves to harmless erotic
adventures if these can prove profitable. The battlefield of these
women fighters is the great French bed. They contribute the erotic
ties— the amorous escapade into which they have drawn the mili-
tary official keeps him fixed to a certain place and makes him lose
valuable time. Very frequently they have to do nothing beyond
keeping him "busy" while other operatives contrive to strip him
of his valuable information.

It is no wonder, therefore, that the pre-war women spies were,
for the most part, singers, dancers, acrobats, etc. Especially in
Russia, female espionage was valued because the Czar's officers,
from the Grand Duke down to the lowest paymaster, had a weak-
ness for foreign women. If any artiste had "arrived" so that a
male public would always stream to her and she would never have
a dearth of men, no matter where she went, an offer would almost
always be made to this woman by some country to become one of
its spies. Let us not forget that Mata Hari was a German spy
before the war, and in certain cases it was only necessary for a
woman to have a large circle of acquaintances for such an offer to
be made to her, for through her, the foreign governments planned
to obtain contacts with the necessary personalities; this was espe-
cially true when the woman held a salon. These conditions were

238 THE SEXUAL HISTORY OF THE WORLD WAR

found in Paris, London, Bucharest and Athens, and long before
the war adventuresses of all sorts strayed through various lands
prepared for anything.

The experience of many centuries had accustomed us to reckon
sexuality as an extremely important factor in espionage; but the
World War brought an enormous increase in this as in so many
other conditions that we have noted. Practically all authorities are
agreed that essentially woman is not fitted for espionage, despite
the fact that she has a much finer instinct, greater adaptability and
keener powers of observation than men. Thus one expert in es-
pionage has written the following about his women colleagues: "It
is difficult to find a woman who in addition to all other qualifi-
cations of beauty, worldliness, elegance and intelligence, also has
that soullessness and unscrupulousness which alone can guarantee
success to a spy. Before women can be thoroughly trained in this
metier one must kill in them every feeling of love, for when a
woman loves truly she forgets everything and betrays everything
for that love."

This man has seen clearly the great danger of erotic emotion,
but even an unimportant love episode, in which the woman spy is
not engaged with all her heart and soul, can suffice to interfere
with her efficacy and prevent her from using the opportunity she
possesses. Of course the same mistake was made by male spies who
not infrequently fell into the net spread for them by women. But
this much is certain: that woman lacks completely any under-
standing of strategical matters and she must always, as it were, be
led along the line, and perform special missions only when the
route has been mapped out for her. To be sure, once she has
entered the matter she will proceed with the necessary interest.
Hence, it happened that during the World War, women spies
actually accomplished very important missions in which they showed
much independence, initiative and ability. The great spies were
not caught. Neither Mata Hari nor Miss Cavell, to mention the
most famous, were really great representatives of their calling.
Mata Hari always remained a great dilettante for whom espionage
was merely an avocation from her calling of professional love,
whereas Cavell was primarily concerned with smuggling human
beings but not with the service of reporting messages. Her case has
nothing to do with eroticism and she never had the need to use
eroticism.

It must not be assumed that whenever a woman entered espio-

AMATORY ADVENTURES OF FEMALE SPIES 239

nage, eroticism was always involved. Homosexual love was also
employed in espionage, the most famous case of this sort being that
of Redl. Alfred Redl, a Czech by birth, may be accounted as one
of those who helped dig the grave of the Austrian empire, for
throughout many years, while he was ostensibly at the head of the
Austrian espionage system, he was at the same time a spy in the
service of Russia and sold to this country the most important
Austrian plans, including the marching plans in case of war. For
many years before he entered the service of the Czar, the Russian
authorities had thrown the most seductive women in his way, with-
out success; Redl simply did not notice them. However, a Russian
agent finally succeeded in ascertaining thet Redl was a homosexual,
and from that time on, the Russians littered Redl's path with very
attractive homoerotic youths. Their new plan succeeded, and Redl
entered into relations with some of these men. Now the Russian
authorities were in the position where Redl just had to capitulate
or disappear from life: they threatened to expose his aberration.
The Russian agent read him a catalog of his sins, accumulated as a
result of diligent inquiry and observation, and the greedy Redl,
terrified by the prospect of the scandal that would ensue and also
attracted by the substantial rewards dangled before his eyes, capitu-
lated and became a perfectly slavish tool of Russia. In a way, it can
certainly be said that the persecution of homosexuality contributed
to digging a grave for the Central powers— for if Redl had not
feared to have the secret of his weakness made public, he would
not have betrayed his country so grievously. A year before the
outbreak of the war, the Russians were in complete possession of
the marching plans of the Austrian empire and even of some of
the German schemes. In order to cover up his tracks, Redl had to
perform a number of criminal acts which included the denunciation
of some of his own innocent subordinates, which crimes were not
revealed until long after the war had started. When a Russian
officer eluded Redl and sold the Russian plan of march to Archduke
Franz Ferdinand directly, he was promptly betrayed by Redl to
the Russians and had to commit suicide. Never did a spy produce
greater disorder in the spying systems and activities of two nations
than Redl did before the war. As he danced on the volcano, he
continued to live a luxurious life with his favorites. Only through
an accident were his nefarious practices revealed. Once he was
assigned to command a battalion ; and while he was away his office
was raided and the "black cabinet" confiscated a number of sus-

240 THE SEXUAL HISTORY OF THE WORLD WAR

picious letters. Redl, who had come back for some of these letters,
was followed by the criminal police. He sought to destroy the docu-
ments which he had on his body but it was too late. That night
high officials came to his hotel room and, after a brief consultation,
they departed leaving a revolver behind them. The next morning
Redl was found shot.

This case is a prototype of espionage tactics but it is almost a
monument to unreasonableness in sexual morality. It may sound
like an exaggeration to say that the World War was lost as a result
of Paragraph 175 of the legal code, but there was certainly some
truth in the assertion. Would Redl have found it necessary to sell
himself to Russia if his sexual life, his erotic self-expression had
not, according to the opinion of his time, been regarded as crimi-
nal? If sexual life in itself were not regarded as infamous it would
not lead so frequently to blackmail. If Redl had had a weakness for
little girls he would have been blackmailed for this too. In this way
eroticism, and especially aberrant eroticism, is an organic part of
espionage activities; erotic blackmail is an integral part of strategic
reports that spies have to render concerning important people. The
purpose of the whole activity is to create a situation which will
render the person in question helpless through a knowledge of his
sexual peculiarities. Let me give an example of this from the first
period of the World War:

Even before the war, France and Italy had concluded a special
agreement based on Italy's treachery to the Triple Alliance and
entailing the removal of French troops from the Italian boundary
to the Western front. Pichon met the Italian Marquis J. at Aix-le-
Bains for a conference. England was not invited to this meeting
but the Intelligence Service knew of it and determined to find out
what had been decided at this palaver. The English secret service
knew that Pichon was old and therefore inaccessible in an erotic
sense, but that the Italian, who was no whit younger, was a great
Don Juan with a fondness for erotic extravagances. In Downing
Street there are registered the extravagances, perversities, perver-
sions, aberrations and erotic fantasies of the important statesmen;
and for every case Downing Street has a sufficient number of
female auxiliaries, blonde, brown, black, in short, women of all
types and conditions whose loyalty to their task would enable them
to undertake any chore, no matter how ugly or unpleasant. So,
knowing the Italian's peculiarity as they did, they detailed a certain
woman to take care of him (let us call her Gloria since in espionage

AMATORY ADVENTURES OF FEMALE SPIES 241

names are not important and are nearly always false). Gloria was
met by two English agents and, having received instructions how
to proceed, she immediately set out after the lascivious Marquis.
In the meantime the agents were able to install microphones in the
conference rooms. The Marquis was a zoo-sadist and whenever he
shot birds he got into such an ecstasy that he fairly danced and
rolled on the ground, especially if he had only wounded the fowl
and was able to enjoy the prospect of its bleeding to death. That
very evening the Marquis dined with Gloria, made her certain
propositions and invited himself to her room for the following
evening. Her room naturally was adjacent to that of the agents
and connected with it. The Marquis requested of the lady one of
those extravagances which are not infrequently enacted in Italian
brothels: she was to appear in a white dress with deep decollete
and bare arms and, in his presence, was to slaughter a white rooster
with a knife that he would bring for her; for this she was to receive
three thousand lire of which he immediately paid her a thousand
down. He planned to leave the hotel as soon as this bloody orgy
would be over, for the conference was finished and the protocols
were completed, as a matter of fact, he had the latter in his breast
pocket.

That the orgy was to serve the purpose of stealing the docu-
ments is of course perfectly clear. When the Marquis entered the
room of the blonde, with rooster and knife in his hand, the agents
were already at their posts. The rooster struggled valiantly for his
life, and when, holding him by the neck, she stuck him with the
knife, he scratched her arms with his sharp claws several times,
which of course was not in the original program. She screamed
with pain, but the Marquis was rolling with ecstasy on the chaise
longue; finally she shrieked for help and then fell to the ground in
a faint. The corridor suddenly swarmed with people; everyone ran
into the room, including the agents. In the light of what met their
eyes as they dashed into the room, they suspected the Marquis of
being a murderer and all the guests hurled themselves upon him.
During this attack one of the agents very skillfully cut out from
the inner pocket of his vest, the dossier containing the document,
an act which in the general excitement remained unobserved. In
this way the documents got to Downing Street and the Marquis
became embroiled in a terrific scandal. This erotic adventure in the
hour of departure cost him all his documents, but it is likely that he

242 THE SEXUAL HISTORY OF THE WORLD WAR

got another set from Pichon because a half-hour after he was
arrested on suspicion of rape, he was released. . . .

The courier service of Prince Udo of Stolberg who, as ordinance
officer, was given the task of bringing a batch of secret documents
to the station commander at Ghent also had disastrous results
though not quite so tragic. Instead of alighting at the proper place,
he drew up his car before the famous officers' brothel Cintra, and
went in for some amatory dalliance, leaving his valuable papers in
the auto. He spent more than a little time in the arms of the
red-haired Titi and not until it was very late did he tear himself
away, drunk and tired. It goes without saying that he left all his
documents with her and had completely forgotten the purpose of
his journey. Try as he would, he was unable to recall where he
had left these important papers. Two days later the red-haired Titi
conscientiously delivered them to the proper place, but what had
happened in the interim remained a secret to the German author-
ities. Nevertheless, it was well known to all that the brothel inmate
in the occupied area was an important apparatus in the practice
of espionage. Other examples of the sort just described can be
multiplied indefinitely, for they were common procedures. The
amnesia produced by alcohol and drugs was an invariable element
of these deceptions and must not be underestimated.

The soldier, be he officer or common man, is always inclined to
attribute every female advance to the power of his own person-
ality and the irresistible charm of his uniform; and in his exalted
consciousness of his own capacities and powers, forgets that all too
frequently he is only the vessel from which the canny female plans
to extract important elements not at all connected with his own
little self or body. Even the most pitiable brothel harlot could, in
the course of a day, gather up from dozens of her customers, little
bits of information which in the evening she might recapitulate to
some secret service operative who would be able to combine all
these tiny atoms of information into a meaningful account.

The carelessness and lack of caution evinced by the higher
officers in regard to women frequently appear almost incredible.
We might recall in this connection Red Army who in 1916, under
very special circumstances, succeeded in filching from a German
dreadnought the secret book of signals on the high seas. This per-
son, also known by the names of Comtesse de Pomeran d'Acqui-
tanie and Flora von Poland, traveled about on land and sea; a
famous industrialist shot himself because of her and a grand duke

AMATORY ADVENTURES OF FEMALE SPIES 243

heaped gifts upon her. The exploit just referred to was carried out
on the battleship Kronprinzessin Cecilie. She is known to have failed
only once, namely in Montreux, when she was prevented from
stealing valuable papers from the German Professor E. through the
cautiousness of the latter's secretary. During an hour of love with
the cooing professor, she sent him to her room to get a vial of
perfume and in the meantime sought to steal his documents, but was
surprised in this attempt by his secretary.

Her names were legion. In addition to the three given above we
might mention Comtesse de Vinier, Mme. de Carerolles and Minna
Steengrave under the last of which she appeared in Germany and
captivated the commandant of a dreadnought. He took her along
with him to Kiel as his mistress and one evening took her upon his
ship just when he had to decipher a message in code. She succeeded
in stealing this code during a favorable moment and, as a result,
the English fleet at Skagerrak was just as well acquainted with the
signals as the Germans, and maneuvered accordingly. The egotism
of the male, and his fear of leaving his mistress alone for one mo-
ment before the eyes of the others, led to the theft of the code, an
extremely daring exploit. It might be remarked that the codes had
only a limited value, for they were frequently stolen, betrayed
and changed and in those cases more harm than good accrued
from believing in them.

Many people attributed the suicide of the Grand Duke of Meck-
lenberg-Strelitz to an espionage affair in which he was more or less
the victim of the pretty Princess Pless, who used him to obtain
various important data. But these reports completely left out of
account that he himself was reputed to be entangled in the net of
a woman spy of the Intelligence Service who was very skillful in
exploiting him. We shall not bother to discuss the question whether
Emma Steuber was her right name but we shall come back to her
in another connection. She was assigned the task of finding out
how the Grand Duke, once a student at Eton, "cooked" his
prisoners-of-war. This "cooking" had for a number of decades been
a common practice with metropolitan police but was prohibited
against prisoners-of-war by the Hague Peace Conference. Emma
crossed the Grand Duke's path in the guise of an Austrian war
widow, and made such an appeal to him that he entered into a
liaison with her which lasted long enough for her to find out the
necessary details, after which she suddenly disappeared. When the
heart of the Viennese woman, who traveled about as a grande dame,

244 THE SEXUAL HISTORY OF THE WORLD WAR

was moved by any man, she became unfit for her spying duties.
She always traveled with a companion who belonged to the Intelli-
gence Service and who took care of financial and social matters.
She was reserved for those cases where prominent people had to be
attached and at such times, of course, the surrender of her body
was an obvious prerequisite for success. But in Lugano, where she
had to spy upon a German major of the general staff, she suddenly
refused and explained in tears to her superior that she could not
betray this man because she loved him. Consequently the task was
taken away from her, for they valued her services and particularly
the attitude manifested in her confession, since there are very
few women spies who confess their inability to proceed with a
task for such emotional reasons and rather prefer to stumble on
and fail— who are, in short, honest enough not to fail because
of love.

This again proves the fact that even the lowest venal woman
loses her value as a spy when she falls in love. Thus in Copen-
hagen, at the Hotel Angleterre, the Intelligence Service installed
a young Danish woman at the beginning of the war whose duty it
was to receive all important visitors. For months she performed her
function perfectly but then she suddenly failed in her task and one
day appeared before her superior and begged permission^ to be
excused from further service inasmuch as she had fallen in love
with one of her temporary lovers; so honest was this girl that she
wished to return some of the money she had received as salary.
This open admission of inability to serve further for emotional
reasons was a very fortunate thing for the secret service, for very
often female operatives would fall violently in love with someone
of the other side and deceive their own superior officers and work
for the enemy camp.

These interferences with normal functioning induced by love
were naturally to be found among men also. "Where love begins,
reason ends." Not only the little Tommy, Poilu or Muskote, but
even the highest officer in the most responsible position, again and
again, both before and during the war, as a result of erotic adven-
tures'and the intoxication produced by them, betrayed important
military secrets. The woman whom he had considered to be only
an erotic creature but who was the microphone of an enemy power,
had stolen important communications from him. The sex-hungry
front officer and the stallion of the halting-station, insatiable and
luxurious in life, the aviator and the member of the general staff,

AMATORY ADVENTURES OF FEMALE SPIES 245

the military chemist and the automobile mechanic, all were equally
careless in their intercourse with women and at the height of their
passion would whisper, into the ear of their compamon-in-lust,
secrets that were never meant to be thus used. The army did much
more to prevent soldiers from becoming infected with venereal dis-
eases than to protect them against the grave evil of espionage.
For the sex-starved soldier in whom erotic energies were seething
to the point of mania, it was too much to expect that his cloudy
senses would be able to perceive that the crafty female spy was
contriving to draw him into her net. Avidly he grasped at the joy
of the moment, for whatever was lost to the moment no eternity
could restore. Hence the soldiers saw only the threat of death and
the blazing apothesis of momentary pleasure, and all the rest was

forgotten. . „

The spy was also a soldier, a soldier in the dark, we might call
him and he fell a prey to the same errors that characterized his
uniformed colleagues. Every organization that was concerned to
combat the danger of espionage and ferret out spies used the same
means as the latter: eroticism against eroticism, mystery against
mystery. In general, the spy was more exposed and hence neces-
sarily more careful than the soldier at the front or the haltmg-
station, than the diplomat or official. He was better protected
against the corrupting female companion than was the front soldier
but, none the less, the number of the former who fell victims to
their eroticism was legion. The mobile spy was not oppressed by
the sex starvation which plagued the soldier at the front, but his
occasional acquaintances were frequently just as dangerous. We
need only remember that the Belgians informed their "light cavalry
that they would not be prosecuted for having intercourse with
the enemy provided they would supply information concerning
the latter. Hence it became a point of honor for all the hetaerae
to try to get information. Now and then the Germans would also
make use of the Belgian prostitutes for espionage purposes (as, for
example, a certain Flora) but they had unpleasant experiences
with these people, for the latter consorted with anyone who came,
and, inasmuch as they were almost continually drunk, they boasted
and blabbered so much that they actually did more harm than
good. Just, as in general criminology, the brothel is always a breed-
ing ground of crime, so it was in the wider sense a breeding ground
for espionage. There were no brothels which were free from alcohol,
and drunkenness is a worthy brother of prostitution; and intoxica-

2 46 THE SEXUAL HISTORY OF THE WORLD WAR

tion and amnesia some of the consequences, not to speak of lesser
evils. The tricks of prostitution remained relatively the same every-
where, no matter if the price were one-mark or the thirty-thousand
franc price of a grand cocotte of the international resort: to chat,
to boast, then, if necessary, to drug the victim and run through
his pockets. Even the English, who had a low opinion of women
spies (Sir Basil Thompson, who certainly was supposed to know
whereof he spoke, once stated that women were not fitted for
spying even if their husbands are convinced of the contrary) never-
theless employed them with great success, and there was no branch
of the secret service without them. All of these women operatives,
even those who were not recruited from the ranks of the cocottes,
were instructed that whenever necessary they were expected to
grant their victim the ultimate request. For some of these operatives
it was a perfectly natural element in the adventure whereas for
others it was strictly avoided, but under certain occasions, when
the impulse was present, chosen of one's own accord. Among
great women spies, however, the journey between the first co-
quettish glance and the removal of the last garment was so long
that many a man gave away his secrets long before. Most women
spies had to give themselves in order to achieve their purposes
more readily but in rare cases this was not true as in the case of
the woman venerated by the Belgians as a national heroine, Ga-
brielle Petit, a modiste, who went through the most remarkable
adventures and experienced the greatest dangers both as a spy and
as a member of the secret Belgian organization Familliengrus. On
certain occasions she went about as a German lieutenant and pos-
sessed German papers. She was finally caught by a small army of
detectives and sentenced to death in Brussels, where she met her
end with remarkable staunchness.

Another national heroine of the Western front was Louise de
Bettignies, whose nom de guerre was Alice DuBois. She, with her
friend, Charlotte (Leonie van Houtte), experienced the most insane
adventures and possessed an espionage net of her own with hun-
dreds of spies. For two years she went about all her tasks with
remarkable resolution before she was captured and sentenced to
death. However, her sentence was commuted to imprisonment and
she died of tuberculosis in the prison at Cologne a few days before
the Armistice. She was incomparably more important for the
strategy of the World War than was Miss Cavell who was executed,
but, when she was caught, the Germans were by no means aware of

AMATORY ADVENTURES OF FEMALE SPIES 247

the importance of their catch. For both these women, the love
of the fatherland and a fanatical hatred of the enemy played a
much larger role than that of eroticism, although occasionally they
also used the latter as a means.

These were women patriots who worked with a demoniac impulse
in contrast to the almost playful adventuresses who worked m
Switzerland, at Berne, Zurich, Lausanne, Geneva, Lugano and
Lucerne. For these women, espionage with the possibility it afforded
of earning extra money, was merely an accompaniment of their
venal love life. Let us quote an extract from a letter of one such
woman which will serve to illustrate the conception all of them had
concerning their activity:

"Yesterday I had a rendezvous with a deck officer. The poor
devil is passionately in love with me and is even desirous of marry-
ing me He invited me to visit him aboard the vessel which invita-
tion I gladly accepted and I succeeded in following him into the
map room. There two black eyes did the rest. . . .

"All is now over with the deck officer. The report was of im-
portance. I am sorry for the chap. ...

"That old B. who is on the coal board interests me. Women play
a great part in his life and a seductive woman can accomplish
much here. I don't know yet whether I should appear as an Ameri-
can or as a Dutch woman. ..."

Everywhere erotic vanity shines through the words of this
creature. Speaking of dark eyes, reminds us that in Berne there
was a woman spy with suspiciously large eyes who bore the nick-
name of Bella Donna. She was paid by the Germans, and used by
the Americans to transmit to the Germans documentary evidence
of the great Alsace hoax, according to which the latter were to
throw their reserves toward Belfort whereas the attack was really
planned against St. Miheil. Bella Donna had gotten into disfavor
because she was flirting much more than she was spying, and she
had not supplied any worthwhile information for quite some time.
The Americans arranged to have certain "important" faked docu-
ments stolen from them by this woman. A very cool American
who carried an obtrusively large dossier approached her in the
Bellevue Palast Hotel and invited her to have a drink with him.
She exchanged glances with the bar keeper and accepted as many
drinks as he offered her. In a cozy corner, their conversation be-
came more intimate, more animated, and, finally, more drowsy until
the soporific effects of the drug, that had been put into the Amen-

248 THE SEXUAL HISTORY OF THE WORLD WAR

can's drinks, took effect and he slid down under the table. While
the bar keeper kept watch, she stole the dossier and immediately
took it into her room where she opened and photographed all the
contents. Just as skillfully she slipped everything back into its
place after everything had been photographed, and on the basis of
these documents the German general staff directed its reserves into
upper Alsace. This is one example of many that we might cite to
illustrate the practice of using female operatives to steal or photo-
graph documents when it was desired to have the enemy know
certain things. For this type of activity Switzerland was the most
favorite checkerboard for there the risk was not as great as in
the war lands. Similar deceptions were frequently exercised in
Berne upon the stout lady known by the nom de guerre of "Turkish
Delight" who had an equal fondness for men, money, alcohol and
pate de fois gras, and of whom it was known that she stood on the
payroll of every land as well as on the suspicious list of every
land. This lady had more names to her credit than anyone else.
She originally came from the Balkans and was active before the
war, appearing under such varied names as Baronne de Louziers,
Ellinor Hawkins, Gina Raffalowitsch, Mme. Mezi, Mme. Hesketh,
Mme: Davidowitsch, Baronne de Belleville, as the circumstances
demanded. She was an efficient spy, being able to influence women
also, but her personality was so striking that during the war she
could only be used in neutral territory. Towards the end of the
war, however, she got to America and this proved to be her undoing,
for all the way from Madrid to New York, she was observed in
the company of a couple and among them a sort of triangular
relation existed. When they disembarked separately at New York,
she was arrested, her baggage opened and a number of important
papers found. She maintained a stubborn silence, however, but one
morning in June, 191 8, she was found dying in her cell from the
effects of poison. It would require an encyclopedia to tell all the
details of the erotic espionage that went on in the hotel rooms of
Berne. The trick of the insulted husband was very frequently used;
and shortly after one of these female operatives began her Swiss
movements, everybody knew her special tastes in everything, in-
cluding matters of the bed, and also, the special tricks of each one.
We might mention at this point two women whom we shall discuss
later in some detail, who also had their headquarters at Berne,
namely, the Polish princess, Neda Mikaela Wiszniewsky, and Irma
Staub.

AMATORY ADVENTURES OF FEMALE SPIES 249

One morning in an estaminet at Feignies near Maubeuge, Mile,
von Heimler was found hanged. A placard on her breast stated
that she had been condemned to death by the Comite de Libre
Belgique; a few hours later, the corpse was stolen from the German
halting-station. This scandal was great as Fraulein von Heimler
had been a spy personally attached to the German Kaiser and had
ridden about in one of the imperial autos. Before the war her name
had been Gertrude von Opplen; then she had married the Belgian
Count de Nys who was the adjutant of the Belgian military attache.
Even at that time she engaged in espionage activities and used her
social position to steal important papers from a French diplomat.
Her husband drove her out and later on found her in the halting-
station among the Germans, a slave to every vice, syphilitic, and
a drug addict. What had once been a beautiful women was now a
painted wreck. He lured her to the hinterland and hanged her and
later, as a sort of symbolic gesture, placed the corpse into the bed
of the chief of the German secret service. Thus the daughter of
the German general died by the hands of her deceived husband,
who had for a long time in Belgium been the most rabid opponent
of her activity in the German spy system.

Women spies have another disadvantage— they tire easily and in
order to whip their senses into activity take to using intoxicants
and narcotics to help them tide over the extremely monotonous
intervals of their occupation. One of the most famous of all Ger-
man spies was ruined by intoxicants, morphine and cocaine, and
now lives on, a pitiful wreck, in a private Swiss sanitarium. This is
the legendary Fraulein Doktor, a woman with nerves of steel, a
cold, logical engine for a mind, well-controlled sensuality, a fas-
cinating body and demoniac eyes. Annemarie Lesser came from
the Tiergarten quarter of Berlin and was driven out by her parents
when she was sixteen, because she had borne a child as a result of a
liaison with an officer. He had to leave her and became a spy before
the war; only a short time after he had succeeded in introducing
her into the secrets of his calling, he died suddenly while on a
journey. Annemarie, who possessed a good education and spoke
several languages, was enormously enthused over her adventurous
vocation and continued in it. She went all through France and
Belgium and was extremely successful in imposing on old and
young officers alike, through her apparent innocuousness, and then
captivating them with her sexual raffinement. In England, she as-
sumed the guise of an artist. Arrested many times she always

250 THE SEXUAL HISTORY OF THE WORLD WAR

succeeded in saving herself at the last moment. At that time she
already had the nickname which clung to her later. When the war
broke out she was spying in Italy. Disguised as a nurse, she went
through Paris with forged papers and got to the Belgian front
where she noticed the manner of the Allies' cooperation and the
weaknesses of the fort at Liittich; later, disguised as a Belgian
peasant woman, she rejoined the German front line forces. In
Berlin she was, for a long time, the soul of the secret service at
Koniggratzerstrasse and she was especially famous for the utter
mercilessness and unscrupulousness with which she made the Ger-
man secret service agents toe the mark. Everyone had to obey
orders and prove his mettle or he was driven to suicide and occa-
sionally assassinated.

In 19 1 6, when the German service failed for the first time, she
herself went into the field again and re-established the service in
Paris. Into her bed there again came important French officers. A
treacherous friend, a Greek by the name of Coudouainis, she had
removed from this life. She was now compelled to go to Paris a
second time because again the service had broken down and this
time she went disguised as a miserable provincial girl. Very skill-
fully she made her way into a hotel which served as the meeting
place for all the French secret service men. Here she got a job as a
chambermaid and was able to obtain very important papers. When
she obtained sufficiently important information, she chloroformed
the guards and escaped from the hotel. At this time she was slav-
ishly addicted to morphine which helped her perform her brilliant
and astounding feats. She finally got over the Swiss border, but
not before she had shot three men. After a short stay in Antwerp,
she returned to France in 1918, for the last time, in the guise of a
South American nurse and surrounded herself with a group of
harmless girl comrades. The latter were necessary to her while she
was getting orientated. She travelled over the Western front in
order to investigate actual conditions behind the line. In a visit to a
hospital she was recognized by a Belgian officer whom she had
once deceived, and the chase after her began. But once again she
succeeded in mastering every iota of mentality and agility in escap-
ing danger. Disguised in a uniform which she had stolen, she
succeeded in making her way through all the fronts but then broke
down, not least because she herself had seen her impending doom.
Her breakdown was so complete that she not only had to leave the
service but to withdraw from the world of normal man altogether.

AMATORY ADVENTURES OF FEMALE SPIES 251

Together with her chief she destroyed all her documents just before
the terrific breakdown came, and then fell into mental darkness.

One of the most unscrupulous woman spies, concerning whom
it was never really known what power she was serving, was Neda
Mikaela Wiszniewsky. She was a Paris foundling who was brought
up by a washerwoman and who rose in the world with a rapidity
comparable only to that of Paiva (later Countess Henckell von
Donnersmarck) fifty years earlier. At fifteen she was picked up at a
cheap hotel, cultivated the light frivolous life and succeeded, in
1903, not only in enchanting the eighty-year-old ennobled Jewish
prince, Adam Wiszniewsky, but also in marrying him and so the
little red-haired harlot became a legitimate princess. But only as
long as it suited her, for shortly after that she began to deceive
him with all manner of men. He gave up the ghost not long after-
wards and, from her subsequent conduct, it may well be assumed
she helped along in his rather sudden passage. The old prince was
extremely jealous of her and their joint departure from the Hotel
Ritz in Madrid in 1905 caused quite a scandal. After his death, she
wasted her rich legacy at Monte Carlo with various admirers and
soon afterwards stood vis-a-vis du rien, practically in the same
position which she had occupied at the beginning of her career.
But the World War opened a new field of activity for her. Un-
doubtedly, at that time she served as a spy for Germany for she
lived in a triangle with a German doctor and a suspicious Spanish
woman. All were arrested, but while the others were released, she
was sentenced to be shot. However, and here is where her good
connections came to the fore, her fascinating beauty was not des-
tined to bleed to death at Vincennes, and the Polish princess was
shipped to the Italian border where she continued her spying
activities. A powerful friend, Count Colobra, protected her from
persecution and even wished to marry her; but she rewarded his
kindness by poisoning him, whereupon she fled to Spain. However,
she was again released, since there were no proofs.

It is not clear how she managed to get to Paris again but shortly
thereafter she had everything that a spy in Paris could have,
including a salon in which she received a very mixed society. Her
intime and lover at this time, and for all the rest of her career, was
an Emir D'Asteck, obviously a Levantine, who asserted that he
was a chemist from Alexandria. He had come to Paris in 19 13 and,
together with Neda, had run through the dowry of his millionaire
wife. Now he became her aide and interpreter inasmuch as he was

252 THE SEXUAL HISTORY OF THE WORLD WAR

a sort of polyglot wonder, speaking twelve languages fluently.
Together they undertook many journeys and were especially fond
of the neutral district of Berne. They consorted with both warring
groups but she entered into intimate relations with a German spy,
Von Treek. However, when the love between them was over, she
sought to murder him in Geneva by chloroforming him and dragging
him to the French border. Unfortunately he recovered, so she
now tried another method of destroying him — by planting forged
documents upon his person. In Lausanne, she entered into a liaison
with the French consul, Baron Fougeres, and after this was termi-
nated, created a scandal there; following this, she entered the
French espionage service at a monthly salary of 15,000 francs.
Her field of operation was again Spain, and this time she seemed
actually to have transmitted important information. Meantime,
D'Asteck was busy with espionage connected with poisoned gas
and also appears to have carried important information to and fro.
It was only the fault of their incorrigible loquacity that towards
the end of the war such important tasks were removed from them,
but because of their important connections nothing more serious
was done to this pair.

Now she and her bully, D'Asteck, became common criminals.
They attracted young men by various misleading advertisements,
had these dupes insured with policies that named them as bene-
ficiaries, and then poisoned them. The last known case of this sort
was perpetrated by them in Madrid in 1922 against a Canadian
after which they disappeared. This little Solange woman was a
veritable demon for she was not only a fantastically deft spy but
she destroyed human life without any scruple whatever. In addi-
tion she ran through the whole gamut of eroticism in which domain
she was irresistible to young and old. True to no one but herself,
she carried on espionage essentially on her own account, that is,
like every harlot, she served whatever man paid her well.

Compared to such a significant figure, the spy of the Belgian
halting-station, Eugenie T., who carried on with anyone, drank,
caroused and slept with every man that presented himself, wormed
out some little secret, then sold it to the invading army, was rather
small fry. Now and then in order to restore the confidence of the
native populace in her she had some of the German soldiers lead
her through the streets of the city in handcuffs, and then throw her
into prison with men in order to worm confidences out of the latter.
On one such occasion one prisoner gave her a ring on condition

AMATORY ADVENTURES OF FEMALE SPIES 253

that she bring him into contact with another man. She arranged this
appointment and then had both men betrayed, but kept the ring
as a trophy of her victory. She was very pretty and the three
English spies who finally were instrumental in her undoing must
have felt very sorry, but the ten thousand marks offered as reward
if they succeeded in betraying her, was without doubt tempting.

We must not forget to mention the petite Solange (not to be
confused with Princess Neda Mikaela) who came of good family,
served untiringly at the front as a nurse, and kept up at the same
time erotic relations with two artillery officers, without either
knowing of the other. She was very skillful in extracting valuable
information from both of them upon the hard bed of love which
the miserable quarters behind the line of battle afforded; together
with the number of wounded at her particular station she had a
good source of information. Moreover, she succeeded in getting
this information to the proper sources by entrusting it to the very
wounded whom she had tended. After these men recovered they
went to Paris for a brief time and they were requested by her to
transmit reports to a certain foreign dentist resident there. What
soldier, who had been kindly treated by a nurse, would decline to
do such a favor for her? When the scheme was discovered, and
search was made for the dentist, he had already disappeared, but
little Solange confessed that the latter, during a severe tooth-
extraction, had drugged and then hypnotized her so that she was
compelled to do whatever he desired, despite the fact that she was
a patriotic Frenchwoman. When she had to appear before the
military court, she poisoned herself with veronal.

A famous case on the Eastern front, in the Galician ambulance
service, was that of the false nurse, Innocentia, the most beautiful,
most devoted and erotically most inaccessible of all. She had one
peculiarity which was noticeable only upon close observation,
namely, that she wore unusually large shoes. A suspicious officer
of the Austrian secret service caused her to undress. Whereupon,
he discovered that Innocentia was really a Russian officer of the
general staff, Gerson Wassilj Wasiljewitsch. The false Innocentia
paid with his life for this masquerade.

Most of the girls who devoted themselves to venal love at the
Belgian halting-stations had a side business. Thus a daughter of a
profiteer residing in Ghent became the mistress of a certain officer
by the name of Rau who was in charge of the supply station. The
Belgian paramour was skillful enough to persuade her Teutonic

254 THE SEXUAL HISTORY OF THE WORLD WAR

swain to bring her an appropriate gift in the form of the newest
German gas mask, and so a few days later this long anticipated
mystery was known behind the Allied front. At that time it was
a great puzzle why suddenly the masks became useless and why
thousands of German soldiers were destroyed despite the fact that
they were wearing gas masks. The answer is, as we have seen, to
be found in the love of a station stallion, who in every other respect
was fulfilling his duty properly. Nor was he the only officer assigned
to a halting-station who cultivated hostile spies as mistresses.
Thus we might mention the commandant of the station at Kortrijk
who, all through the occupation, kept an English mistress. As a
result of their lust, these poorly supervised station officers were
everywhere the chief victims of hostile espionage. The practice of
theft connected with coitus so common to prostitutes (what the
Germans call Beischlajsdiebstahl) became an instrument of war,
for if we examine the activities of female spies, practically ninety
per cent of their achievements can be summed up under this in-
delicate rubric. Whether we are dealing with the Savoy Hotel at
Lodz, or the Fledermaus at Zurich, the Bristol at Warsaw, or the
Salonica dives Floca and Tour Blanche, in every case these female
artists were hetaerse and the hetserae were spies.

It is interesting to relate that the English intelligence officer
stationed at Salonica, General Cory, who maintained a small army
of young Greek women, was deceived by them in one way or
another, as when they entered his employ they were already work-
ing for the younger and more interesting Fritz Schenk. Every
week they had a tete-a-tete with the latter at Larissa, during which
they betrayed to him everything that Cory wanted to know from
them, and when they returned home they would stuff Cory with
false reports concerning the German spy. One of these ladies was
sent to Malta by Cory as a regular agent, but the Intelligence
Service made short work of this Mile. Popovitch, because of her
frequent telegrams to her "mother," and shot her. Subsequently
the myopic Cory was degraded in the service and placed in an
artillery group. It is needless to say that he was even more
helpless in the face of the clever espionage which Queen Sophie
was carrying on from Greece in the interests of Mackensen.

A role of decisive importance was played by the Hotel Bristol
at Warsaw. As long as Poland was ruled by the Russian army, the
British Intelligence Service was quartered there (every state had a
special detail of secret service men guard its own allies). The real

AMATORY ADVENTURES OF FEMALE SPIES 255

owner of the hotel and the leading personality of the Intelligence
Service at the hotel was a man named Jeffries who acted the part
of a porter, and occasionally masqueraded as a Russian officer.
Since the front was only two hours' journey from Warsaw, every
form of merrymaking was prohibited and so to overcome this
difficulty Jeffries created a subterranean Bristol in the cellars m
which mad orgies were celebrated. When the Germans captured
Warsaw nothing changed in the nature of the place, only the
uniforms in the cellar. The cocottes remained the same and reports
continued to fly to Downing Street. Because Jeffries seemed over-
eager to please, and because he purveyed to the conquerors mar-
raines in a copious supply, he began to arouse suspicion. One day
a courier was intercepted and the whole story became clear; where-
upon without further ceremony Jeffries and two female aids were
stood up before a firing squad and the next day a German porter
ran the business.

Again and again we are amazed by the extraordinary, almost
insane, daring exhibited in some of these espionage exploits. _ It
seemed as though the individuals concerned were really playing
dangerously with life and not out of a desire for gain but more
frequently though a sort of hunger of the nerves, of a tremendous
desire for new sensations which leads in the same direction as
narcotics. It is understood, of course, that again and again narcotics
were used in the service of espionage and eroticism. Where time
permitted it the attempt was made to deprave such labile person-
alities as would be useful in the cause of the given enterprise, that
is to debauch them by making them drug addicts, thus making
them more accessible to control. The first, but not completely clear,
case is that of the French ship ensign, Ullmo, who, for many years,
maintained at his villa in Toulon all the apparatus necessary for
extremely refined opium smoking, and together with his mistress
consumed considerable quantities of this drug daily. When he was
on the seas it was impossible for him to smoke opium, so he had
to content himself with opium pills. He became completely de-
bauched and, in order to maintain the double luxury of marcotics
and mistresses, he turned to stealing signal codes and documents.
This affair, which took place in 1908, had important effects upon
the use of narcotics.

Much more, however, was achieved during the war by France
in debauching the battlefront, the hinterland and the leading
bigwigs even though these previously had been considerably cocain-

256 THE SEXUAL HISTORY OF THE WORLD WAR

ized. Thus it is related of a certain French general that he had to be
expelled from a hotel in the middle of the night because he had
befouled the whole atmosphere with a bottle of ether which he
had brought with him from the front. Cocottes and artistes of
various kinds were not only swarming about in Swiss hotels, but
were to be found in evacuated areas, and it was these people who
supplied aviators, for example, with their drugs. As instruments of
demoralization and as part of the technique of espionage, morphine
and cocaine were of equal importance. In drink, in cigarettes, in
food, everywhere drugs and poisons threatened the possessor of
war secrets, if Eros could not gain her ends alone. Thus, at the end
of the war, espionage was so interconnected with and so drenched
in narcotics, that one could almost draw the inverted conclusion
that whosoever used drugs also served as a spy. In their employ-
ment of drugs, spies undoubtedly sought the euphoric rather than
the narcotic effects; that is, they needed stimulants in order to
tone up the nerves which were constantly laboring under a terrific
strain. It is also true that they employed somnifacients in order to
sleep quietly for a few hours and prevent talking aloud during
sleep. It is needless to add that rarely did they sleep alone.

Let us now turn to the great tragedies of espionage which ended
in executions. It has already been mentioned that it was not the
measure of guilt which determined whether a culprit was to be
shot, but much more, whether it was advisable, from the point of
view of strategy— that is,, whether at a certain moment absolute
terrorism in executing spies, or the magnanimous gesture of sparing
them from death, would be more advisable from the tactical point
of view. There is some justice for the assertion of the French
criminologist, Goron, that very frequently there were as many
intrigues in connection with an execution as with an election.

It may appear noteworthy that in France, where ever since 1887
women were not executed, the execution of spies was carried on
with particular fanaticism and that Poincare never pardoned any-
one on principle, while the German Kaiser, after the unfortunate
affair of Miss Edith Cavell, had practically no other women shot.

Today we do not possess any reliable information, with the
exception of Austria, concerning the number of spies executed
during the World War. But it is an established fact that in France
numerous women did lose their lives in this way. The case of
Tichelly is not quite clear, despite the relatively simple statement
of it by the French. It appears very likely that this woman was

AMATORY ADVENTURES OF FEMALE SPIES 257

executed as a sort of theatrical gesture which the circumstances of
the time dictated, for, at the turn of the year between 191 6 and
19 1 7, conditions on the Western front were particularly bad for
France. The Tichelly woman, a forty-four-year-old mother of a
French soldier, did not have the slightest notion of the consequences
of her deeds and she could not at all understand why they were
going to shoot her, seeing that she had not killed anyone. However,
on March 15 she was executed at Poteau at the same time that her
son was wrestling with death at one of the front hospitals. Poincare
made it a principle to affirm every death verdict so that the courts
would know that he was not going to interfere with the machinery
of the law. This compelled the courts, in certain cases, to withhold
their recommendations for death sentence from Poincare when
there did not seem to be overwhelming proof of guilt. Thus on
April 24, 191 7, the court reversed its own death verdict against
the beautiful nurse, Rose Doucmetiere, who had been condemned
to death because she had put certain questions to wounded men.
Not quite as fortunate was Marguerite Francillard who was sen-
tenced to death as a typical carrier of messages (boite aux lettres).
This unfortunate little girl was killed for no other reason than to
demonstrate once and for all that any participation in activities of
this sort would constitute an act of espionage punishable by death.
This pretty little midinette from Grenoble came to the city of Paris,
young, inexperienced and hungry for life, and there fell into the
hands of a spy, who at once as lover and exploiter, used the girl
as a mere instrument. Among other things, he persuaded her that
in France she would receive reports for certain other Frenchmen
who were being kept in Germany as prisoners-of-war and that she
would have to bring these messages to Geneva. It soon became
known that she, in her utter naivete, was acting as a spy courier
but the authorities did not arrest her immediately, inasmuch as
they wanted to get her superior. This charming little girl threaded
her way among the agents who were watching over her, utterly blind
to the dangers that were threatening, remaining true to her lover,
despite all temptation. Thousands of such ambulatory post-offices
were in function at that time. Gradually these correspondents were
rounded up— Spaniards, Dutchmen, Roumanians, Greeks— almost
a dozen of them were executed at Vincennes without Marguerite
suspecting anything. Now she met her lover in Geneva, only be-
cause he no longer dared to set foot on French soil. When this
became known and it was clear that her lover could not be arrested,

258 THE SEXUAL HISTORY OF THE WORLD WAR

they pulled her in. With the greatest naturalness she confessed
everything, but with such simplicity and genuine innocence that
the court was divided. This was one of the few cases during the
war when there was such a lack of unanimity about the guilt of a
suspected spy. However, by a majority of one, the verdict of
death was finally imposed. It is generally taken for granted that
for guilt to be established there must be a consciousness of guilt or
evil done, intention in other words, but, of course, chauvinism
made small bones about such considerations of abstract principle
and used this case as an example to discourage all carrying of
messages. It was a very edifying execution when this na'ive child
was tied up against the wall on January 10, 19 17. Someone had
been clever enough to convince Marguerite herself of her guilt
but this was small comfort for her. One heard her shriek Je demande
pardon and a moment later she was hanging there, a bloody corpse.
She was photographed in this condition and subsequently the
picture was described as that of Mata Hari. The firing squad now
filed past the corpse while the bugles played their melodies. And in
Geneva the German agent sought a new mistress and a new
messenger.

When one compares the deeds of this child with those of the
female spies mentioned earlier, one immediately remembers an old
adage which says that the little ones get hanged with fanfares and
trumpets. This execution was purely an act of terrorism to warn
off all who might be tempted to engage in similar activities. ^

We now come to the most famous espionage drama in the
world. It concerns a woman to whom many volumes have already
been devoted but who is still as great a mystery as ever— Mata
Hari. Rarely did any case create such a tremendous furore, and
even today there is current in Paris a sort of Barbarossa legend
that she was never executed, but that the ceremony was carried out
with a dummy; and still others have introduced the Tosca motif
into the legend.

Mata Hari, or more correctly, Margaret Zella, was executed
as a spy and, since none of her relatives or friends claimed the body,
it was left to anatomy for the advancement of which her much-
loved limbs were cut up into fragments.

Mata Hari was a spy who was little fitted for her profession, a
spy who carried on her activity as a sort of temporary amuse-
ment because it made easier her real activity of being a grande
cocotte. If she had not been executed when she was so young it

AMATORY ADVENTURES OF FEMALE SPIES 259

might have been possible to ferret out the truth about her, but
now it is difficult to penetrate beyond the corona of legend. She
was born in 1876 and at the time of her execution was therefore
about forty-two. On her father's side she might have had a mixed
blood, but on her mother's side she undoubtedly belonged to the
Dutch nobility. At nineteen she made an unortunate marriage with
a colonial officer, Max Leod, and accompanied him to the colonies.
With a certain tendency to mysticism and to frivolity she not
only gravitated towards Asiatic cults but also gave her husband
more or less ground for jealousy and, in a jealous scene, he bit off
one of her nipples. Two children resulted from this union, one of
whom fell a victim to a Japanese feud. The husband, who was a
slave to drink, fell sick with tropical cholera and then began
to create all sorts of scandals which led to his recall to Europe
where he set his wife upon the street with the well-known admoni-
tion that she was not to return until she brought money. It was
not utterly impossible for her to return home, and so with what little
money she got she went to Paris. The rest was the street. . . .

One lady of the sidewalks gave her a tip: Maisons des Rendez-
vous; and so Mile. Zella entered one of the better public houses
and remained there for a while. It is interesting that during her
experiences here she was once examined by a physician who later
recognized her in an important mission. Energetic and persevering,
she did not merely enter upon a protracted period of decay in
luxurious beds, for in her there glowed a portion of that mysterious
Asia which serves the gods in temple dances and fantastic orgies.
She apotheosized prostitution into the mysticism of Asia and later
even appeared as an Asiatic dancer. This was in 1903 at a private
performance, and in October, 1905, she was already making public
appearances at the Musee Guimet, an Oriental mystery house.
Margarete Zella became Mata Hari, "the eye of the morning," and
skillfully created a legend about herself which helped her achieve
great popularity. This little Dutch woman could not really dance;
her dances were something different — disrobing, affirmation of life,
and a display of unrestrained sensuality, garbed in mysticism which
completely captivated the audience.

Mata Hari became the rage of the day and the toast of Paris.
She received any number of offers to appear in revues and theaters.
She was altogether en vogue as a woman of the world and having
many admirers at that time she could demand any price from her
lovers. She stood on the same level with Otero, Cavalieri, Clee de

26o THE SEXUAL HISTORY OF THE WORLD WAR

Merode, Badet and Liane de Pougy. At that time it was considered
the thing, among the worldlings of Paris, to have had intimate
relations with her and the circle of her admirers grew constantly
because she passed for an erotic marvel as a mistress of the Kama
Sutra and all the other Oriental arts of love. She was invited to
foreign countries and ever more men ruined themselves for her.
No one attempted to deny that the German Crown Prince and the
Duke of Braunschweig were among the number of her ephemeral
adventures and this naturally increased her charm. She visited
Holland, Spain, Italy and Russia, son gia mille e tre. ... In Holland
it was the Prime Minister, Van der Linden, and in Paris, a number
of ministers, senators and high officers. She became a famous per-
son, one who consorted with the most important men.

Thus, later on, it was pointed out as proof of her guilt, that on
the eve of the declaration of war, while she was fulfilling an
appearance at the Berlin W inter garten, she had an intimate seance
with the Chief of Police, Von Jagow, although there was nothing
official about this action. What was much more suspicious was the
fact that, several weeks before the beginning of the war, she had
sold her villa at Neuilly and all her possessions before she journeyed
to foreign lands. She must have entered the German secret service
some time before the war, for her official designation, H-21, is a
low number in that list (in this H probably represents Holland
and 21 her number). Incidentally this assignation of numbers to
agents was a piece of tomfoolery, just as were all the codes and
ciphers which, when they didn't actually betray the persons who
bore them, constituted a proof of espionage and actually brought
many spies to their deaths. An even greater piece of foolishness
was the maintenance of the same number for any given operative,
as in the case of Mata Hari who kept her number all through the
war; and it was this fact which really brought her to her end. The
chief characteristic of this aspect of the secret service was an over-
estimation of the enemy's stupidity and of their own wisdom.

Thanks to her great reputation, Mata Hari was able to slip out
of every difficulty at first. She was able to stave off the demands of
the German secret service through gracious promises; and in view
of her great connections and important lovers, the German spy
chiefs paid her lavishly in anticipation of the usefulness that she
promised to evince later on. Mata Hari, however, was clever
enough to use her splendid connections, not for espionage, but for
advertising herself, and, at the end, when she was brought before

AMATORY ADVENTURES OF FEMALE SPIES 261

the war court, she actually put up this argument in defense of
herself, but this trump card did not win her a single trick. For her,
espionage was just a means for advertising and a method of render-
ing conquests easier in the higher circles, in which enterprises the
deceived parties who gave out certain valuable information paid
the costs. It was not that she brought no reports at all, one could
scarcely move in the circle in question without having some sort of
news get to one's ear, but that she made no intensive effort to get
at any information. To her it always seemed more important to
cultivate the man who happened to be the chief of the secret
service at the given time and captivate his heart. He would thus,
for his own interests and partly for the interests of the state, assign
her enough funds to enable her to go anywhere and do much as
she pleased. Later when she declared, before the French military
court with the most extreme cynicism, that the German espionage
chiefs had paid for their own personal nights of love with the
unsupervised funds of their departments, this was a well-deserved
attack upon the chauvinistic psyche of the Teutonic military
machine !

Not only was Mata Hari the mistress of the Dutch chief of the
German espionage service — it is interesting to speculate how much
any one man could be the lover of such a professional adventuress
—but at the same time she was able to draw the Spanish func-
tionary into her net. She managed to have the German Crown
Prince take her along to the Silesian maneuvers, and to captivate
others of the bourgeois class so that they spent their fortunes on
her. She was a famous hetaera and just as the demi-mondaine, Gaby
Deslys, as mistress of ex-King Manuel worked for the Intelligence
Service, so did this Madame Sex work for Germany. Undoubtedly,
she was one of the best paid German agents, and that, not because
of her spying ability, but more because of her erotic activity and
her promises. Compared to the achievements of the poorly paid
proletarian spies, she accomplished little. What is more, she used
her knowledge of German submarines in Spain and Morocco to
the detriment of Germany, for when she needed money she sold
it to the enemy's secret service. It is no secret that a time finally
came when the German service was disgusted with her, determined
to get rid of her in one way or another. Hence it was quite in
agreement with the action of French military service, for this freed
them of a large and unjustifiable expense. The Germans themselves
were on the verge of getting rid of her in spite of her fame as the

262 THE SEXUAL HISTORY OF THE WORLD WAR

most distinguished woman spy of the World War and despite her
adoration by hysterical souls. She was not, by any means, the
greatest of the women spies who were executed.

She met her fate, not so much because of the damage she had
actually inflicted, but because it was expected that by inflicting
the death penalty upon this prominent lover of distinguished men
of the enemy camp, a beneficial moral effect would be exercised
and the prevention of espionage would be helped enormously. A
propos of this, there were several special intrigues that were carried
on in Paris in connection with her. The version that Poincare
revenged himself upon her for having refused him once, is un-
tenable in view of the fact that he did not extend pardons to
anyone as a matter of principle. Van der Linden's intercession for
her was a truly chivalrous act, though not very wise from the
point of view of statecraft, and it was disavowed by the very
moral Queen. Mata Hari who was a great artist in the realm of
love but only a dilettante as a spy, was shot because, in the fall of
191 7, there was need for an international gesture on a large scale.
Doubtless she was guilty, but her execution, nevertheless, threw
a shadow on French gallantry. Her fate directed the glance of the
world to other female spies.

A nefarious role was played in her life by the Marquis de Mon-
tessac, similar to the one played by Emir D'Asteck towards the
little Solange. He appears to have been merely an adventurer and it
is quite likely that it was he who drew Mata Hari into the net of
espionage and later organized and exploited her work. During the
first months of the World War, she disappeared from sight for a
number of months after her infamous guest appearance at the
Wintergarten and it may be assumed that at that time she was
completing her education in espionage at Amsterdam in order to
be sent to the Allied front. Several times she came to London and
began to appear on the list of suspects of the Intelligence Service;
and it was from this source that the attention of the French was
first drawn to her. As soon as she returned to Paris, she became the
lover of the chief of one of the divisions in the Department of
State, and, at the same time she kept up her connections with her
lover, Montessac, who was in the aviation service. It was regarded
as suspicious that she suddenly became interested in nursing and
requested that she be sent to Vittel where, in addition to the
hospital, there was a very important aviation camp. Her request
was granted and she got to the hospital. Here, during the day,

AMATORY ADVENTURES OF FEMALE SPIES 263

she carried on a liaison with a Russian officer and spent mad nights
in the company of the young and valiant aviators. But nothing
could be proved against her, for she was still playing the role of
the cocotte. However, the authorities were displeased with her
presence and requested her removal, which was forthwith accom-
plished. Her relations with Montessac were not clearly known, and
it certainly was not known that the latter brought the accumu-
lated reports to the German front directly by dropping them there
from his airship. For this reason, all the watching to which she was
subjected was a complete fiasco. At this time it appears that she
entered the French service. She disappeared from sight for six
weeks and when she reappeared she turned over to the French
authorities information which resulted in the destruction of a num-
ber of German submarines; this constituted her introductory service
in behalf of the French.

From some secret source the latter ascertained in 19 16 that there
was a certain woman in Paris who was working for Germany with
the greatest success. For a while this was thought to be Fraulein
Doktor but later when this German agent was known to be back
in Berlin and valuable information continued to trickle out through
that Paris source, the suspicion gradually arose that Mata Hari was
an agent double. A short time after that, they learnt the control
number, H-21, but no one knew who H-21 was. Mata Hari was
now sent to Belgium to deliver five letters to French agents, of
whom one was certainly not a traitor. At the last moment, how-
ever, she received different instructions and under certain remark-
able circumstances, got to Spain where, from the very first moment,
she was put under strict surveillance. In the Grand Hotel in
Madrid, she rented the room next to that of the German naval
attache, V. Kroon, and sought a contact with the French military
attache. When her money ran out she demanded that the German
representative get her funds, and, to avoid suspicion, that it be
paid to her by a neutral party, the Dutch ambassador at Paris. The
naval attache immediately cabled the German espionage chief at
Amsterdam to send out fifteen thousand pesetas to agent H-21.
The code message was picked up by the radio station at Eiffel
Tower and, in the meantime, a little amateur spy had found out
for the French secret service that Mata Hari was H-21. When she
returned to Paris they let her call for the money and the next
morning she was arrested.

That she received the Police Commissioner naked and that she

264 THE SEXUAL HISTORY OF THE WORLD WAR

very slowly and obtrusively dressed in his presence is nothing
remarkable with anyone acquainted with the customs of French
coquetry, but all this procedure was of no avail. She no longer had
those five letters, but the fact that, in the meantime, a spy had been
the recipient of one of those five letters and had been shot by the
Germans, was enough proof to hang her. Although there are not a
few gaps in the proof of Mata Hari's guilt, nevertheless, there is
enough testimony to make the death verdict comprehensible. She
steadfastly refused to believe that the sentence would be carried
out in view of her very high connections, but when it appeared that
nothing would save her she surrendered herself to her destiny
with Oriental fatalism. On October 15, 19 17, she met her end in
the same place where many of her far less distinguished prede-
cessors had been executed.

We do not wish to spend any more time over the legally sen-
tenced and executed victims of espionage, but we wish to say a
few words concerning some cases of secret and private executions
which also belonged to the "war in the dark" and also have a
strong erotic undertone.

One day there was an item in the Geneva papers that the popular
Parisian artiste, Marussia X., had been found dead upon her bed
in her hotel room, clad in her party clothes and covered with
flowers. It was assumed that her death was due to suicide. Natu-
rally, the only motive for suicide in such a young and attractive
person must be unhappy love, and so the Geneva police did not
make any further investigation of the case. As a matter of fact,
however, the pretty Polish widow was executed in this fashion
inasmuch as there was no other way of dealing with her in neutral
territory. She was an artiste and a grande cocotte and had fallen in
love with and become the mistress of a Roumanian working for
Germany, who drew her into his organization. He had to leave
France because they were hot on his trail and so, in order to be
near him and possibly help him, she sought engagements in Switzer-
land. When admission to Paris was refused her, she telephoned to a
theater agent there, requesting him to send her a telegram to the
effect that she had a job in Paris and that it was necessary for
her to come at once. This man became suspicious and immediately
informed the secret service at the Boulevard St. Germain where
they had long been keeping an eye upon her. She then sought
connections in Switzerland and made overtures to the French
consul at Lausanne, Baron de Fougere. Whether she was executed

AMATORY ADVENTURES OF FEMALE SPIES 265

by the German secret service or this treason or whether she fell a
victim to a purely private erotic quarrel or revenge arising from
jealousy, it is a fact that on the evening of her death she had dined
with an elegantly clad man, had taken a short water journey with
him and then had returned to her hotel room where she had drunk
coffee, in which, undoubtedly, fatal poison had been inserted.

Among other circumstances of this sort there may be listed the
unnatural death in Paris of the German spy, Van Kaarback. This
enterprising chap had formerly been a dancing teacher, croupier,
teacher of languages and member of many shady professions. One
day he was inveigled into the German sercret service by Frdulein
Doktor and educated in espionage at Antwerp before he was sent
to Paris in whose Montmartre he had formerly squandered his
money. It was a great joy for him to get to Paris again with some
money in his purse, but, unfortunately for him, he was very care-
fully watched from the moment that he left Antwerp. His guardians,
also Dutchmen, struck up a friendship with him and all together
they went jaire la noce a Montmartre. In addition the operatives
that had been assigned to guard Van Kaarback threw a "dancer"
into his path with whom he was so taken that he confessed to her
all his qualities and duties, and even displayed to her certain of his
official papers. This sealed the poor man's fate and a short time
after he was found dead in one of the dark streets of the Montmarte
with a knife between his shoulders, on the blade of which appeared
the place of its manufacture, Solingen. Thus we see that the
extremely hazardous occupation of the spy was intimately connected
with sexuality; and we find in the infamous activities of espionage
not only all the sordid tricks of crime but also the variants of
eroticism and prostitution.

Chapter 15

EROTICISM BEHIND MILITARY DRILL

Destruction of Normal Emotions — Primitive Instincts Aroused — Brutal
Elements of Drill — Sadism and Masochism — Alcoholism Encouraged — Fre-
quency of Suicides — Morbid Sexuality of Garrison Life — Eroticism in
Crime and Punishment — Killing of Wounded — Sexual Factors in Desertion
— Release of Bestial Traits

THE bestiality of war begins in the training camp at drill. Soldiers'
drill in its modern form did not always exist as a natural method of
training for mass murder. It is a historical product which came into
existence with the great standing army of Louis IX and his minister,
Louvois; but the contemporary methods of drill are a heritage of
the eighteenth century. The great mass of soldiers of this period
were unhappy proletarians who, as soon as they became impressed
into the army, ceased to be members of human society and became
abused, declassed creatures without personal destiny. In order to
make an army of these unfortunate creatures, drill was necessary,
and its purpose obvious. First it was necessary to kill in the soldier
every personal and human reaction so that at the moment of danger
to life he would do his duty blindly and mechanically and permit
himself to be murdered and to keep intact the character of the
army as the army of nobles or officers. At that time there arose the
notion of "human material" which had to be trained. In the soldier
the human being is systematically killed and the animal aroused, but
trained to remain within certain limits. By and large, this institution
was still extant when the great national armies left the trenches of
the World War. The national armies were armies of generalized
military duty in which the principal thing was the officers and their
esprit de corps whereas the men were will-less and soul-less matter,
trained by drill to blind obedience, to bear unspeakable suffering
and to view death calmly.

The eighteenth century, when drill first made its appearance,
was also the period of mechanistic materialism. The enlightened of
that age were convinced that man was really a machine and that
practically anything could be made of him through mechanical
education. But instead of making the soldier a machine they made
him an animal. He was trained to become a military machine by
arousing all his hidden primitive impulses — those same instincts
which had been suppressed because they were noxious to society.
His drill masters sought to compensate him for the loss of all

266

EROTICISM BEHIND MILITARY DRILL 267

human relationships by releasing all these primitive impulses. In
this way drill is tied up with sexuality, for the instincts which
society tries to suppress and which are liberated by the garrison,
are largely of a sexual nature. There is little difference between the
preparation for war in drill and actual participation in war itself for
arousing erotic excitations of brutality and cruelty, and also re-
leasing homosexual components. Perhaps these occur in drill even
more regularly and in a more repulsive form than in war. The
justification of the training period as preparation for war was
amply demonstrated during the World War.

Even during the actual fighting the most insane and utterly
useless occupations were found for the soldier, as though death
was not an actuality. Such a task as polishing his buttons was pur-
sued with an intensity that is incredible and tragi-comic. In drill
masochism plays as great a role as sadism. Without the effective
collaboration of the middle classes— the class of subordinate offi-
cers so brilliantly analyzed in Heinrich Mann's Untertan — the rule
of the rulers would have collapsed. The self-evident sado-maso-
chistic inclinations of this type of subordinate are not to be denied.
During drill these instincts which slumber in almost every man
are favored by the social relationships and are aggravated to a path-
ological degree. The ideal type of soldier, the "good" subordinate
officer is a sadist to those below him and a masochist to his superior.
Military life has always given us many examples of this.

The whole mechanism of drill and the whole activity of the
militarist hierarchy is intended to inculcate in the soldier a feeling
of inferiority, and to constantly nourish this feeling by suggestion.
This feeling of inferiority explains a great portion of the psycho-
logical and erotic aberrations among soldiers. The latter, who was
trampled by those above him, compensated for this by oppressing
those under him; his drive for personal achievement and honor,
negated by his superiors, had to seek fulfillment at the expense of
those beneath him. Both the subservience to one and the brutality
to the other, which are regarded as special military virtues, had
erotic nuances. Franz Carl Enders has summarized the importance
of drill for the soldier in the following way: "The well-trained
soldier does everything, aside from the excesses he is guilty of, with
a feeling of duty. Obedience to commands is his only duty. To
think about the moral justification of a command is the first step to
disobedience. As a result of the strong suggestions exercised upon
him in training — the indoctrination of the esprit de corps, the con-

268 THE SEXUAL HISTORY OF THE WORLD WAR

cepts of military leadership, love for his fatherland — he is gradually
gotten to a state of hypnosis, and in order to remember the lesson it
is constantly recalled by auto-suggestion. I have made this obser-
vation among hundreds of soldiers and in myself too. The brave
soldier never asks, 'Why?' for he is motivated by the holy duty of
obedience. He reproaches himself much more for permitting a
prisoner to escape than for killing him without cause. The first is
infraction of duty, the second is merely an act of brutality. The
first brands the man as a bad soldier while the second leaves no
stigma whatever. What is ethically objectionable is the system of
education, not the helpless victims of this system."

It was commonly asserted that those regiments in which the most
painful and brutal elements of drill were maintained, even in the
face of death, made the best showing in battle. This is quite natural
for only through the most powerful mass suggestion is it possible to
get men to forget, in moments of grave danger, the natural instincts
of self-preservation, and to mechanically obey commands that have
been drilled into them. A very vivid description of the soul state
of men during an attack is to be found in the novel Two Days of
Heroism by that serious conscientious observer, Bruno Vogel, who
depicts for us the hypnosis, the almost somnambulistic trance in
which the men carried out their bloody deeds. All that had been
drilled into them in their training-period becomes the dominant
idea at the moment of attack, and this idea alone controls the in-
dividual. This may be one reason why men forgot the war so easily,
because in its most terrifying moments they were not fully con-
scious. Graves has pointed out that the English called these slaugh-
ters of the World War "shows" and has described a scene after a
battle in which officers and men faced each other with a feeling of
shame, as though they were all drunk (as indeed they not infre-
quently were).

Of course the authorities didn't stop with drill and suggestion,
with arousing the instincts of cruelty, and with purveying alcohol
in order to induce the soldier to give his life for his fatherland. The
soldier was left no choice, for if he did not obey the whistle of the
commanding officer during an attack, he was killed by this officer.
This served as a powerful persuasive for the others. If a panic broke
out among a whole detachment of troops the machine guns behind
them would take care of the "turncoats". More than a few men
met their death this way. The soldier had to die the death of the

EROTICISM BEHIND MILITARY DRILL 269

hero or be shamefully murdered by his own comrades. The only
way out was suicide which occurred with terrifying frequency.

One of the pleasant aspects of life during the training period,
even in war-time, is the well-known "garrison tone" which in-
cludes the use of obscenities. An old German army couplet runs:

Huren, Saufen, Spielen, Fluchen
Heisst dem Mut Erfrischung suchen.

Of course that morbid sexuality, in which all of militarism is
drenched, has always played a special role in this vulgarity. Noth-
ing happens during drill or in the garrison without an accompani-
ment of disgusting obscenities. A whole volume could be filled with
this sort of thing, but here we merely refer the reader to Bruno
Vogel's Long Live War, with its almost phonographically accurate
transcriptions of conversations. This obscenity followed the soldier
everywhere and constituted the atmosphere which he breathed,
and even the elegy sung at his death. We ought to remember that
Goethe in his Campagne in Frankreich expressed his amazement at
the way in which soldiers marched into battle singing obscene
songs, but this singing which the soldier was required to do was
part of the drill; and, when he was not reminded to sing, he was
helped along by drinks and gaiety. A famous joke current at this
time among the Germans was the following: "Hello, how goes
it?" — "Oh thanks, O.K. One son is in a French prison, the other
dead, my daughter bore a child from the first lieutenant, and I
myself, just turned forty-six, sing the following song every morn-
ing: 'Madl, geh, spreiz die net, her mit der Bucks!' "

It is impossible to set on paper the contents of these foul songs.
One of our authorities has found the right words to designate the
idolatry of excrement found among the soldiers: "The soldier is
nothing more than a walking stomach. All he wants is to eat and
to eliminate." The humorous sentence from Braven Soldaten
Schwejk concerning the commandant whose maxim was: "When
the soldier has had his goulash and has been able to eliminate thor-
oughly in the latrine, he is well satisfied," is a faithful statement
of the notion held by more than one military leader. The author
of this book has also told us how this venerator of defecation used
to inspect his soldiers diligently during their "enjoyment" of the
latrine. In the trenches the odor of excrement was mixed with that
of blood. Graves is our authority for the statement that the ditches
stank from gas, blood, lyddite and latrine. Now just as the gar-

27o THE SEXUAL HISTORY OF THE WORLD WAR

rison was the repulsive caricature of war life, so the stench of the
garrison was an accurate component of the atmosphere of war
which prepared the soldier for his calling. Vring has analyzed the
odor of the garrison in the following words: "It reeked, it stank of
sweat, phenol, urine, vegetable soups which were concocted in the
cellar in tremendous vats, of the old rusty cans in which coffee was
kept, of men who always ate artillery bread with honey, of leather
fat, and, especially on Monday morning, of vomit which those who
had been out on a spree had puked into paper baskets. All in all it
was an odor which God had not created. This odor was every-
where, and you could not escape it."

We pass rapidly over other phases connected with drill, such as
military punishments of which all armies had several forms, includ-
ing the torture of crucifixion. Another subject that we shall pass
over is that relating to the treatment of prisoners. The good soldier
was taught that it was better to murder a prisoner than to let him
escape. Once the instincts of cruelty had been released there was no
stopping them. Moreover the outbreak of sadistic instincts is nearly
always "a sign of an inferiority feeling and the human being who
had been drilled into being a soldier had virtually been made into
a walking inferiority complex, an enemy of society. The usual con-
sequence of this was the abuse of unarmed men. Also soldiers were
even encouraged to kill the wounded. The leaders of the various
armies had a special purpose in this for by exercising cruelty against
prisoners-of-war they desired to scare their own soldiers and ren-
der them less likely to surrender to the enemy. These cruelties to
the enemy had analogues in the treatment of one's own wounded.
The sanitary corps of the English army, for example, if they had to
make a choice of two wounded, were instructed to pick up the one
that seemed most likely to recover and be restored to military ser-
vice. It is readily understandable that in such circumstances genuine
sadists came into their own during the war. Many men had to sac-
rifice their lives or bear fierce pains in order to afford pleasure to a
sadistic officer. A most graphic account of such an officer and his
erotic perversion is to be found in the book of Vogel already men-
tioned to which the reader is referred, Long Live War.

Why hundreds of thousands did not flee from this hell by de-
sertion or suicide, we can understand only if we consider the psy-
chological skill with which the soldiers were gradually habituated
to war. Jaroslav Hasek has given an excellent statement of this
system: "The dirt of the garrison and the meanness of the officers;

EROTICISM BEHIND MILITARY DRILL 271

the rotten treatment under the hypocritical cloak of care; the
horrible food, the awful beds, the stench of the wagons, the fatigue
of marching, and the hope that one would not get into actual
battle, and that nothing dangerous would happen to anyone. This
hope that 'tomorrow everything would be over' prevented the
soldiers from fleeing or taking their own lives."

But none the less there were great numbers of deserters during
the World War; and at the end of the war there were in every
metropolis small armies of these fugitives. The growth in the num-
ber of deserters was one of the chief manifestations of the gradual
dissolution of the armed power of the Entente nations. Although
there were sufficient reasons for all soldiers to free themselves from
military service at any price, it was commonly known that the
majority of deserters were inferior socially and psychologically and
that 30 percent of them had served prison sentences before. Gener-
ally the motives for flight were not quite so simple, and there is
extant a large literature on the psychology of deserters, the most
distinguished contribution to which is that of Dr. Victor Taus,
who regarded, as the most frequent motives for desertion, psychic
infantilism, neuroses, incapacity to carry out the required tasks and
fear of punishment for some trespass, as the man who fled because
he had gotten gonorrhea and feared the punishment. In nearly
every case of desertion there were contributory factors of a sexual
nature, conscious or unconscious. Then too many men deserted
out of motives of sexual jealousy because they heard that their
wives were being unfaithful.

In short, all the inhuman, senseless and degrading activities of
drill had the purpose during the World War, as at all times, of
kneading human beings into one monstrous unity in which there
were no human beings, but one enormous unspeakably brutal
monster.

Chapter 16

PROPAGANDA AND SEX LIES

Hate Propaganda and Lie Propaganda — Their Necessity as War Weapons
— Erotic Undercurrent of War Lies — Sex Lies in Print — Some Sadistic
Specimens — Obscene Poster Propaganda— Sadistic Newspaper War Pictures
—Sexual Accusations Against the Enemy — German vs. French Lies — Serbs
vs. Bulgarians — Fictions Revenged as Facts

AN old proverb, and one that was frequently cited during the
war, says that when war comes to a land there are as many lies as
grains of sand. Lies were, and remain, a recognized instrument in
the waging of war, an indispensable weapon for heightening the
lust and enthusiasm for war. This was true in equal measure of all
lands during the war. Everywhere war propaganda strove to mis-
lead the native population by divers means. During the critical days
of Germany a member of a Reichstag committee made the famous
statement, "We were deceived and deluded." Two years after the
war, Lord Fisher declared that England had been "fooled into
war." The only question is which side was more skillful in em-
ploying the weapon of propaganda. It is our opinion that Germany
was far behind the art of Crewe House from which issued all the
perfected skill of war propaganda of Lord Northcliffe.

War propaganda fell into two categories. Both aimed at in-
creasing the lust for war by aggravating hatred of the enemy. The
first category strove directly to make the enemy appear hateful
and contemptible. The second class indirectly aimed at the same
thing by definite accusations and reports of acts committed during
the war by the enemy. On the one hand, then, a hatred was culti-
vated but no motive was given for it (it may be because it was
presumed to be well known or superfluous) and, on the other hand,
stories were fabricated which served as nourishment for the hatred.
We shall examine both categories with particular emphasis on the
mass psychoses thus induced. The erotic coloring of many of these
war lies will also be shown.

The psychological attitude of modern nations against war is so
well developed that every war must be made to appear as a war of
defense against a threatening, blood-thirsty, invading army. Hence,
in every land a vast hatred had to be engendered which, instead of
appealing to the feeling of conscious membership in a cultural
community, appealed to that patriotism which Schopenhauer had
called "the passion of the stupid." The success of this propaganda

272

PROPAGANDA AND SEX LIES

273

of hatred cannot be questioned. Philippi sang, "We are become a
people of wrath" and it may still be remembered how system-
atically hatred was cultivated in Germany during the great con-
flagration.

Although generalizations on this theme are dangerous, it may
be asserted that German hatred during the World War was the
most systematic of all. We all remember the manifesto of ninety-
three distinguished representatives of German science and art in
behalf of war. All the methods of mass suggestion— press, literature,
art — became subservient to this propaganda of hatred, especially
literature whose accommodations to the interest of militarism left
nothing to be desired. The contribution of the graphic arts to this
propaganda of hatred is the enormous number of graphic produc-
tions representing the enemy as an inferior, contemptible and
abominable race. To this group belong also all those representa-
tions operating with symbolic motives and portraying Germania as
as assassin or the French Marianne as a shameless strumpet. In this
genre the artists of the Latin lands were undisputed masters, among
whom we may mention the series, "Death Dance," issued at Tre-
viso even before the entrance of Italy into the war. Of considerable
importance was the effect of postcards distributed in all the war-
ring lands, of which a large proportion were pornographic. The
Italian caricatures were distinguished by an even greater obscenity
than the French. These scatological pictures, frequently smeared
with filth and urine, must have corresponded to a deep-seated psy-
chological necessity. These erotic pictures showed undressed or
naked figures and represented not only the excretio alvi but also
the genitals, and delighted to represent the scrotum particularly as
of an enormous size. It was the French soldiers' conception that
this organ in the German soldier could be called by the name of
sac de taureau and its magnification was held to be due to long
abstinence. One of these pictures represented a company calling
out to its leader, Femmes, filles! Ou nous /. . . vousl Many of these
pictures had a homosexual note and represented not only German
soldiers but German military chieftains as bougres. Particularly dis-
gusting are those pictures which represent Germans tortured by
starvation as having become coprophagi and depicting them as
eating excrement off the streets. Others depicted soilure of German
generals by victorious Frenchmen and rapes.

The Italians, not content with such pictures, represented Ger-
mans as having coitus with and torturing all kinds of animals,

274 THE SEXUAL HISTORY OF THE WORLD WAR

swine, dogs, cats, hens, goats and ducks. Of course there was no
lack of sadistic pictures in which corpses of females were shown
piled high and departing troops stuffing female breasts into their
knapsacks. Others showed genitals cut all the way through the
belly or with firearms or other things stuffed into them. One pic-
ture showed a menu card of soldiers containing cannibalistic dishes.
In a pot in the foreground there are female breasts boiling and in
another corner of the picture a group of soldiers is finding a great
deal of pleasure in a dish called cul de jemme jroid. Some of these
drawings are so foul that they cannot even be described. We need
scarcely say that the movies became an extremely important method
of war propaganda.

In order to make the propaganda of hatred more effective it was
necessary to choke every aspiration for peace and to brand such
yearning as cowardice, or at the best, idealistic dreams. It is well
known that, in the first two years of the war, the mere mention
of peace was branded as a most contemptible defeatism ; and as late
as September, 191 8, a confidential order from the German censors
(collected in the valuables of Kurt Muhsam, How We Were De-
ceived) stated the following: "The press is requested not to publish
any statement connected with hope for peace." It is a lamentable
fact that the most violent fighters against pacifism were the men of
the church and in some cases scientists.

In regard to the lies that were current during the war in the
interests of propaganda, it must be said that these lies were not
always consciously fabricated and were not the results of conscious
activities. War, like every great experience, like every mighty social
transformation or natural catastrophe, as revolution or earthquake,
liberated psychic forces which became impossible to control by
reason. Especially in the first months of the war, there came
to evidence a veritable mass psychosis, an epidemic pseudologica
phantastica which the authorities strove against but always only
to protect their own land from injurious rumors. Lies that injured
the enemy were not particularly controlled. There can't be any
doubt that the atrocities which the press of all the warring nations
played up were for the most part fictions, but that they did appear
in the press portrays the degree to which human beings had fallen
a prey to mass psychosis. What is most interesting to the historian
of morals is that the majority of these accusations were of a sadis-
tic nature. During the whole war, but especially at the beginning,
the warring nations accused each other of such deeds which, if

PROPAGANDA AND SEX LIES

275

they had actually happened, could only be explained by a com-
plete absence of civilization or by overwhelming sadistic instincts.
But the spread of such lurid tales is an index of the feeling of that
time. All the sadistic atrocities which were attributed to the enemy
had been known from earlier wars in which they really appeared
as typical forms of warfare. The cutting off of female breasts, the
slitting of bellies, rape and other deeds of violence, did occur in
this war also but, to a large degree, individual cases were invented.
Just as there was no real war art and war poetry, no new sadistic
acts were invented in this war.

A classic collection of sadistic pictures is the very popular war
album of the French artist, Domergue, entitled Les Crimes Alle-
numds. This collection, based on material provided by newspaper
reports and by soldiers, appears to one who is acquainted with the
psychology of sex, as graphic projections of persons afflicted with
pathological aberrations of the sexual sense.

In a discussion of war lies, from the viewpoint of sexology, there
should not be omitted the accusations of certain sex practices to
the enemy. Freud has correctly stated that, during the war, even
science lost its passionless impartiality and the most faithful ser-
vitors of science sought to apply the methods of their mistress to
defeating the enemy. The anthropologists sought to make the
enemy appear inferior and degenerate, and the psychiatrists en-
deavored to establish that the enemy was psychopathic. It is as
pitiable as it is significant that even men of such outstanding mental
capacity as Dr. Iwan Bloch fell a victim to this temptation. In a
certain discussion, this celebrated investigator of sex reproached
the French with the fact that the Marquis de Sade and Gilles de
Rais had sprung from their race, implying that certain conclusions
could be drawn from this fact concerning the sexual character of
the whole French people. If a scientist of the rank of Dr. Iwan
Bloch could speak this way, it is easy to understand how ordinary
men would yield much more readily to this temptation. Thus a
brochure by Dr. J. Spier-Irving on Sex Life During the War con-
tains the statement, "We know that the French soldiers are, in
respect to sex, the most depraved, the most swinish, etc."

And, so far as non-scientific propaganda was concerned, French
artists and journalists all made it appear as though they seriously
believed that all Germans, without exception, were homosexual.
The Germans revenged themselves by asserting that all the other
aberrations of psychopathia sexualis were French specialties.

276 THE SEXUAL HISTORY OF THE WORLD WAR

Finally, something should be said about the effect of war prop-
aganda. The propaganda of hatred contributed to destroying the
barriers, erected by civilization, to the free exercise of instinct. But
the campaign of lies went further, and by its attribution to the
enemy of atrocities that had never been perpetrated, it called forth
in their own soldiers the desire for retribution. This fact had
already been observed in the Balkan War (the Hungarian writer,
Franz Molnar, devoted an essay to this subject), namely, that be-
cause certain bestialities were attributed to a nation, the soldiers of
the enemy camp, actuated by the desire for vengeance, carried
out in practice these same deeds which, until then, had only been
fiction. If, for example, it was asserted that the Serbs executed their
prisoners, then the Bulgarians actually did execute whatever Serbs
fell into their hands. In this way the fictitious atrocity became the
atrocious truth.

During the Great War the nations were well aware of this as is
proven by the direction printed on certain French postcards de-
picting atrocities, "Not to be sent to the front; reprisals must be
avoided." Certainly this was not due to any fear that measures of
vengeance would be undertaken against Germans for atrocities they
had not committed, but to the possible bitterness which the find-
ing of such products on the person of captured Frenchmen would
arouse among the Germans. But this campaign of lies had other
unfortunate consequences. In the novel of Perhobstler, there is a
very moving scene of this sort which describes how an English
soldier, who had been severely wounded in his leg, lay for nine
days and nights near the German positions without appealing for
help because he had been warned by English propaganda against
the inhumanity of the Huns. When he was found, his leg was
gangrened and generalized infection had already set in. That this
soldier lost his life was directly due to vicious propaganda.

But the greatest danger of propaganda lay in that which Nicolai
warned us of during the first period of the war: "Hatred survives the
provocation to hatred." Nicolai's remark is proved by the fact that
even today the peoples have not yet been united; that a short time
ago a memorial was dedicated in Belgium, the inscription of which
is reminiscent of the war-time; that by the side of pacifistic litera-
ture and art, a large number of works are produced in which the
hatred of the former enemy is cultivated; that even today atroci-
ties that were concocted during the World War make their ap-
pearance in print from time to time; and finally, that these atroci-

PROPAGANDA AND SEX LIES

277

ties are set forth in schoolbooks and in this way the next generation
is indoctrinated with the poison. As an example of the last point,
we may quote a patriotic poem cited by Ponsonby from a volume
that appeared recently: "They stemmed the first mad onrush of
the cultured German Hun, who outraged every female Belgian and
maimed every mother's son."

The memory of mankind is not as short as is supposed. To this
day the disproof of the falsehoods circulated by war propaganda
has not by any means received the same publicity granted for years
to the vicious lies. As long as there is war there will be war lies to
justify the carrying out of war; and as long as there exists the
hatred of nations nourished by these lies, every opportunity to
develop this hatred, however false, will be accepted more readily
than unpleasant truths.

Chapter 17

THE BESTIALIZATION OF MAN

Soldiers Grow Indifferent to Murder Horrors— Grotesque Amusements of
Soldiers— "War of Filth"— Dirt and Lice in the Trenches— Necessity of
Alcohol to Maintain Morale— Prisoners Released for War Service— Civil
Criminals Become War Heroes— Lust of Psychopaths for War and Mur-
der—Primitive Black French Troops on Battlefront— Bestial Reversion of
Man Necessary— Church Sanctions and Aids Murder— Hypocritical Role
of Field Chaplains— Animality of Erotic Relations— Immorality of Love
Life at Home— Dissolution of Normal Marriage Ties

BY the word "brutalization" or "bestialization" we denote a whole
series of changes in the human soul that came to expression during
the war, changes in the psyche of the masses, not only in the direct
combatants, but in the total population of all warring states. "If we
tear the mask of 'steel bath' from the war," wrote Major Endres,
"then the true face appears: Brutalization at the front for the
purpose of producing a more brutal type of war; and brutalization
of the hinterland in order to create and perpetuate a feeling of
hatred against the enemy, which is foreign to a cultured people."
The literary treatment of this phenomenon was left to Remarque,
but at the beginning of the war Freud gave us an unsurpassed
psychoanalytic treatment of this. He shows that war scratches off
the upper layer of culture and permits the primitive man to appear,
so that in brutalization we are dealing with that psychological
phenomenon which psychoanalysis calls regression. We have spoken
of these things before, but what is important, and what constitutes
a further proof of the new turn in the history of the war, is the
fact that no class of the population remained untouched. The
spiritual change, which was undergone by the soldier at the front,
was also felt by the whole people even if to a lesser degree.

The life which the soldier led, especially the common soldier at
the front, had to have a brutalizing effect. Despite all the achieve-
ments of technique which made possible the carrying on of the
murderous business of war to a degree previously unknown, the
actual fighters in the war had to live on a low primitive level. The
external circumstances of their life differed very little from those
of primitive men whose lives were continually in danger. They
too had to hide from their enemies, to crawl under the earth and
into caves. Not even the discipline of war and the muchly praised
feeling of comradeship were able to effect the analogy that we

278

THE BESTIALIZATION OF MAN 279

have drawn concerning the external life of the primitive man and
the modern soldier, for, after all, primitive man also lived in hordes
and obeyed a leader.

The bloody business of war is in itself brutalizing. This is known
from all previous wars, but circumstances became much worse in
our war due to trench warfare and the new implements of destruc-
tion. The war had even greater effects upon the young than upon
the old, for the former were more impressionable. As the war
continued, the men's senses became dull and the little respect for
other people's lives that had obtained among a few of the soldiers,
sank to the lowest level. Men were killed as readily as cats and the
killer took no thought of what he was really doing. Thousands of
letters from the front showed the horror that was felt at first at the
destruction of life. Thousands showed the gradual growth of in-
difference, and still others the soul tortures of those who had to
murder against their will. That the few delicate strings of the
human heart tended to snap entirely under the strain, and that, as a
reaction to the incessant danger of death there developed a senseless
drive towards pleasures, is quite understandable and regrettable.

Even militarism without war has brutalizing effects. Long before
war was declared, statistics showed the consequences of the prox-
imity of the garrison to the morality of the nearby inhabitants.
And of course, during the war, wherever there were armies, the
population felt the moral effect of the presence of soldiers and the
institutions of militarism.

We have already shown that obscene speech is a natural conse-
quence of a soldier's life, and the speech of the soldiers of every
nation contains abundant proof of this. A very outspoken presen-
tation of this viewpoint can be found in the war novel of Erich
W. Unger entitled The Youth Sebastian Goes to War, but we are
unable to quote any of the obscenities found there.

In the relations of man to death, there was a thorough transfor-
mation. Freud was the first to investigate this problem and gave a
lasting answer to numbers of important questions. In his treatise on
war and death, which is undoubtedly one of the best contributions
to the psychology of war, he examined the relation of primitive
man to death and finds an all-pervasive similarity between the
reaction of the latter and the spiritual attitudes of the modern man
at war. He came to the conclusion that we are descended from
generations of murderers in whose blood lay the lust for murder,
as it perhaps lurks in our own blood. The ethical aspiration of

28o THE SEXUAL HISTORY OF THE WORLD WAR

mankind is the heritage of human history. Unconsciously we have
almost the same attitude towards death as did primeval man, be-
cause in this as in many other ways, the man of bygone ages has
survived unchanged in our unconscious. Now it is characteristic
of primitive man that he does not believe in his own death, but
only in that of the enemy which he carries out without any scruple
and which, the murder having been completed, he welcomes with
joy. On the other hand, we recognize all too well the possibility
of death for the stranger and the enemy and set about inflicting
death upon him as unscrupulously and as joyously as did primitive
man. Freud held that insofar as we are to be judged by our un-
conscious excitations, we are a band of murderers just like primi-
tive men. "War again compels us to be heroes, not to believe in
our own death; and it stamps strangers as enemies whose death
is to be sought and carried out; it impels us to become indifferent
to the death of beloved people."

This retrogression into primeval conditions which is a clear
example of brutalization in the strict sense of the word, comes to
expression in the manner in which the soldiers actually faced
death. In War Letters of Students Who Fell in the War, we find the
following letter of a poor lad who fell in Northern France during
October, 1914:

"The sight of the wounded both with light and grave injuries,
of the corpses of men and horses that lie all around, undoubtedly
brings one pain, but the pain is not nearly so strong and so lasting
as one pictured it before the war. Undoubtedly, it is partly due to
the fact that one feels how utterly impossible it is to be of help
here. But is not this very feeling already the beginning of a griev-
ous indifference akin to brutality? Or else how is it possible that
I am more pained by the difficulty of bearing my own loneliness
that the sight of the suffering of so many others? What does it
avail then that all the bullets and the grenades missed me if I have
sustained such injuries to my soul?"

Naturally this writer was quite correct; that of which he was
complaining, with so much youthful idealism, was only the start.
The longer the war lasted, the more did the human soul sink into
the mire and become animalized, and it is highly significant that
the English soldiers sang the lovely church song of death and its
sting in the following parody: "Oh death, where is thy sting— a —
ling — a — ling — ?"

The Vienna Weltblatt of December, 19 14, published the follow-

THE B ESTI ALIZ ATION OF MAN

281

ing remarkable communication which demonstrates how utterly
callous the soldier grew in the trenches:

"Our boys understand very well how to become comfortable in
the trenches and they are even able to engage in card games when-
ever there is a lull in the fighting. At any rate, a letter from the
battlefront at Bozen contains the following amusing episode: Three
soldiers were lying in a trench near each other and playing hazard.
Each one had put in twenty heller, and the object of the whole
game was that whichever one of the three would shoot to death
the first Russian who appeared would win the sixty heller. About
a quarter of an hour later, a Russian made his appearance about
250 paces away. The sentry, who had the edge on the others, shot
and killed the Russian, whereupon, his face wreathed in smiles, he
joyously pocketed his winnings. The merry gamesters were Reid-
muller, Wagner and Habitzl, the last of whom won the prize."

Philosophers and historians have, for a long time, believed that
they are able to measure the cultural level of a people by the
manner in which it honors its dead and respects human life. This
also goes for war. The longer the war lasted, the more common
became the practice of playing with death. This could be observed
among all soldiers. Here is what a Hungarian front soldier has
written us: "After the bitter fighting at D., near the Eastern front,
we moved into new positions which were in a God-awful condi-
tion, torn up by bombs and in places completely buried. The fact
that under the piles of earth many decayed corpses and parts of
the human body were buried, led to the invention of a grotesque
game. In one of these mounds there protruded a dirty, filth-cov-
ered soldier's boot. One day — ennui was even more oppressive to
us than the monotonous wailing of shrapnel — someone got the
idea of bringing out his shoe-polish, and scratching off the dirt and
filth, and shining this boot to a high polish. The comrades stood
around in a circle and held their sides with laughter. Each one took
a turn in the enterprise. Indeed, this polishing of the boot became
a daily morning exercise, a sort of game in which no one saw any-
thing grotesque or unusual."

Graves has related a similar case. But the hinterland did not
bring to the greatest of all mysteries, namely death, any more
respect than was evinced at the front. Official reports of the death
of tens of thousands of the enemy were received either with com-
plete equanimity or with patriotic pleasure, if they were not alto-
gether characterized by a libidinous undertone as in the case inves-

282 THE SEXUAL HISTORY OF THE WORLD WAR

tigated by Magnus Hirschfeld of the sadist who used to get an
orgasm when he read of a great slaughter. In general, it cannot be
said that the deportment of the hinterland was any more humane
than of the soldier at the front. The press, particularly at the be-
ginning, indulged the demand for the most hair-raising atrocities;
and that it later moderated its tone was only due to the fact that its
readers gradually became dulled to news of this sort, which is also
a sign of brutalization. The death and suffering of other people
were in this war something which, if they were not regarded as
positive sources of pleasure, left one cold. After the specific ac-
tivities of the war, the numerous executions of that period are
another proof of our thesis. It is certainly no accident that, during
the war, thousands of pictures were circulated showing the execu-
tions of deserters, traitors, etc., and nearly always one finds in these
pictures the executor of the death verdict and other individuals
who could not forego the opportunity of immortalizing them-
selves in this way. Particularly famous in this connection was the
postcard photograph distributed in large quantities depicting the
execution of Dr. Battisti, formerly the Austrian member of Parlia-
ment for Trieste, who at the beginning of the war had fled to
Germany, was captured by Austrian officers and sentenced to death.

As another contribution to the study of the attitude towards
death manifested by people during the World War, we might
mention the practice, common in a number of lands, whereby a
bereaved person was forbidden to mourn any relative who had
fallen in the war. In this connection there belong the metal plates
with the inscription "I have gladly given to the Fatherland a dear
life" which were supposed to supplant the mourning clothes of the
woman.

As has already been mentioned, the longer the war lasted the
more progress did the brutalization make. Every day, on every
front, and in every nation, animality increased. Every day it was
assumed that man who had been endowed with reason could sink
no further, but not many days thereafter it would appear clearly
that the followers of a Voltaire, Kant or Christ had sunk morally
and spiritually below the level of the animal. If the war had not
lasted so long, one would never have been able to study all the
phenomena of brutalization in their terrifyingly clear form, and
so, in this respect, we owe a debt of thanks to the diplomats and
military leaders who are responsible for the prolongation of the
war. Early in 191 6, Hollander wrote that war had already become,

THE BESTIALIZATION OF MAN 283

for the soldiers, home and calling; that the army was a people alien
to all other peoples; that the language of war was incomprehen-
sible to one outside that realm; that what was formerly regarded as
insanity, was now a matter of daily occurrence and habit. Per-
hobstler also expressed the opinion that war had already become
second nature to the soldier who now lived as ordered a life as he
had formerly lived behind the plow, or in an office, or wherever
his occupation had been. No soldier would be disturbed any longer
over water holes, rain or snow, but just obeyed orders, only that if
something did not suit him he would say, "Suck my a — ," instead
of the usual, "Thanks."

The fact that war came to be regarded as a permanent condition
is expressed in a number of phenomena. As has been emphasized by
Hollander, the institution of furloughs was, after all, a recognition
of that fact, yet the front and the hinterland gradually drew fur-
ther apart. In Arthur Kuhnert's war novel, The War Front of
Women, the soldier who goes home on furlough expresses the
opinion that he, just like the rest of his comrades, is no longer able
to establish any connection with the hinterland and with his wife.
This feeling of strangeness often expressed itself by the front sol-
dier in his statement that those who had remained at home had
become more brutalized than he had. Thus we find in the war
book by Charles Edmond, A Subaltern's War, that an English sol-
dier has the following thoughts concerning the people back home:

"The misery of the war was calculated to tame the civil popula-
tion even before us because they had no discipline, they were not
united, and they could not be sustained by any war spirit. For-
tunately they were not exposed to such difficult trials as the sol-
diers, but what those remaining at home suffered, they suffered as
individuals and they knew only the atrocities of war, only its terror,
hatred, pain, suffering and other unpleasantness. They never saw
the comradeship and the mutual help without which soldiers in the
trenches would be unable to live a single day. Even in regard to
the enemy, the spirit of the trenches was more humane than that
behind the front, for at the front, stories of atrocities were not
fabricated. The duty which compels one to kill the enemy does not
compel one to hate him."

How was it possible for war to supplant home for the soldier
and, in so many cases, to make him feel as if he were really at
home there? If we are to believe military experts, the World War
was the last large-scale military enterprise of mankind in which

284 THE SEXUAL HISTORY OF THE WORLD WAR

the method of trench fighting would be used. For the war of the
future, according to the most famous representatives of military
science will be entirely fought with poison gases and aerial com-
bats. No matter how uncomfortable such prophecy is for us, such
a fulfillment will at least have the advantage of removing one great
nuisance of the World War, namely, the crass discrepancy between
civilized life and the life of the soldier deprived of every conveni-
ence of civilization. It was this trench warfare that robbed the
soldier of all the blessings of hygiene, a circumstance which could
scarcely have been the case in previous wars for the mercenaries
of the Thirty Years' War, aside from the danger to which then-
occupation necessarily exposed them, did not live a life appreci-
ably different from the viewpoint of comforts of civilization from
that of the majority of the non-combatants. Of course, the lack of
all modern conveniences was felt, even in the World War, only
on the line of battle.

There is no doubt about the fact that the war was murderous,
inhuman, demoralizing, but, above all things, what Mussolini, who
was at that time and remains to this day a rapturous defendant of
war, has termed in his diary, "a war of filth."

The most serious problem of the trenches after the inordinate
dirt was, by the unanimous consent of all soldiers— the louse. It is
well known that things became so bad that any soldier who spent
one whole day at the front became irretrievably lousy. Nor were
all the cheap jokes that circulated concerning this plague, which
was called by the French with the charming term of endearment,
Toto, able to dispel its obnoxiousness, or the threat to health of
the omnipresent vermin. What is more, the sanitary authorities
were quite helpless in the face of this plague, and some of the
measures that military leaders took to combat it were ludricous,
for they consisted virtually in driving out the devil with Beelzebub.
Thus one of the measures, advocated by the Austrian military
commandants to combat vermin, was to have all the uniforms and
underthings which had become lousy spread out on ant heaps. It
was assumed that the ants would quickly consume the vermin. As
soon as the ants had swallowed up the lice, the articles of clothing
were supposed to be washed with cold water and soap. Wherever
possible this method of debusing was enjoined for the Austrian
soldier.

Moreover, the industry of the hinterland was much concerned
to exploit this plague of lice and numerous preparations were gotten

THE B ESTI ALIZ ATION OF MAN 285

up to combat it, particularly in England. Concerning the efficacy
of the latter, a soldier has written the following:

"The chemicals that were supposed to help us fight against oui
intimate enemies were quite remarkable. The most successful was a
girdle that had to be worn close to the body, manufactured by a
large chemical company. According to the statement of the manu-
facturers, no louse would come anywhere near this girdle but, as
soon as they would detect its presence, would scurry away in
search of more attractive quarters. But my experience was quite
the reverse. I discovered that the lice loved this girdle and used it
as home, marriage chamber, hospital and nursery. On this girdle
they would take their little walks, mate, lay their eggs and raise
their young. Except on those occasions when one of them would
die a sudden death by my hand, they would scarcely ever leave the
girdle, save in search of food. When the manufacturer of this con-
traption asked me for a testimonial as to its merits, I was certainly
embarrassed. . . ."

In the same vein, Egon Erwin Kisch has written: "The grey
salve appears to have been very salubrious for my guests, but it is
far from healthy for my body which has become covered with
eczema. As much of my skin as the lice and the salve have spared,
my own fingernails undermine by night. Today I put on a lot of
vaseline but this had no more than a soothing effect upon the skin
eruption, and besides that I stink. Involuntarily I think of Job as
my bones are bored during the night and those that pursue me
never go to rest."

That the dirty, lousy atmosphere of the trench, deprived of all
the appurtenances of civilization, had to result in brutalization
seems quite plain. This brutalization made the soldier more suitable
for fighting. One can actually speak of an interaction between war-
fare and spiritual demoralization, for each conditions and influences
the other. The leaders of the armies were quite clear on this point.
Hence, despite all sanctimonious promises, nothing was ever really
done to restrain the abuse of alcohol in the trenches. We are re-
minded of Nietzsche, who anticipated more than one notion of
psychoanalysis and individual psychology: "Through alcohol one
brings oneself back to a stage of culture which one has tran-
scended." It is scarcely possible to give a more pregnant definition
of Freudian regression. Thus alcohol, nicotine and other drugs, so
far as they were available, were only an artificially accelerated
way to the achievement of a desired state which consisted in a

286 THE SEXUAL HISTORY OF THE WORLD WAR

throwing off of the whitewash of culture, in short, in brutalization.
(Indeed, it was scarcely possible to carry out any trench attack if
one was not partly drugged.) For this reason whisky was called in
the German trenches kampfgeist (martial spirit) and on the French
lines morale was synonymous with vin.

The addiction to drink of the Englishman, especially of the
officers, is well known. We may remember the characteristic re-
mark made by the hero of the best-known English war novel,
Journey's End: "If I had ever gone over the top without having
taken some whiskey first, I would certainly have gone mad with
fright." The authors of the two best-known war books of England,
Captain Graves and General Crozier, both of whom had referred
to the predilection of British officers at the front for alcohol, had,
as a consequence, to defend themselves against a violent storm of
criticism. The controversies aroused by the statements of the
authors just referred to, show us with considerable certainty that
the life of the English officer at the front was passed behind a veil
of intoxication.

From the remarks and notations made by the soldiers of all
nations and some military leaders, it is unquestionable that between
alcoholism and war there exists a necessary connection, the ex-
planation of which we find in brutalization. To be sure, this con-
dition arises automatically under the influence of war but it is
artificially abetted by alcohol and other intoxicants.

In an official order, issued before the German offensive of March,
1918, it was specifically enjoined that on days of heavy fighting,
alcohol be distributed to the soldiers. The war book of Bauer con-
tains the following statement: "During the war it was proven that
alcohol, taken in moderate quantities, was the best means of main-
taining morale and decreasing nervous tension and thereby in-
directly increasing the power of work and the joy in achievement."
Again, General Otto von Bulow stated that all the military leaders
had the experience that a moderate indulgence in alcohol had a
very favorable effect upon the mood and conduct of the troops.
It was his opinion that many difficult periods could not have been
lived through otherwise. Finally let us quote the opinion of Count
Luckner: "While breaking through the English blockade with my
Sea Eagle, I was engaged by an English dreadnought. A few mo-
ments had to decide whether I and my sixty-four trusty comrades
would lose our boat and our lives or whether we would come through
safely. At that moment I resorted to a cure which a Hamburg

THE BESTIALIZATION OF MAN 287

friend had given me to take along for my most difficult hour—
a century old cognac. After I had taken a few swallows I was freed
of every fear and confusion. Heart, spirit, nerves, brain, all worked
again in perfect order and so I was able to pass the most difficult
test of my life."

The brochure from which we have taken the last two examples
and which contains a large number of similar expressions by Ger-
man military leaders, appeared as an answer to the famous book of
Professor Hans Schmidt entitled, Why We Lost the War. It was
Schmidt's thesis that the offensives of the spring and summer of
19 1 8, the last heroic endeavors of the German militarism, which
were condemned to defeat, fell through because of the intoxication
of German soldiers. Despite the wealth of material that this author
adduces, he does not quite prove his thesis; nevertheless, according
to our way of thinking, the problem of alcoholism during the war
is completely independent of defeat in the war. But, on the other
hand, as a means to induce regression it is of symptomatic impor-
tance for the inevitable transformation of the psyche during war.

Naturally war propaganda did not hesitate to avail itself of this
means to slander the enemy. The French, Americans, and particu-
larly the English, all drank, as we have seen and as all war memoirs
convince us, not less than the Germans; but the propaganda of the
Allies was clever enough to represent excesses of intoxication as a
specialty of the German military. A famous French cartoon shows
us the "heroic path" of the German army — which consists of the
corpse of a murdered child in the foreground and on both sides a
horde of empty wine flasks.

It would have been an easy thing for the responsible authorities
to control the consumption of alcohol during the war had they
wished to do so. But this was by no means the case. The military
leaders in every land concentrated their attention upon guarantee-
ing the success of mobilization and they were interested in con-
trolling alcohol only to the extent of preventing disciplinary crimes.
By the way, we should like to cite the following extremely interest-
ing data: During the war about five hundred thousand people,
most of them children, died in Germany as a consequence of mal-
nutrition and starvation. At the same time more than fifty million
hundredweight of barley were turned into beer and more than one
hundred and sixty million hundredweight of potatoes were trans-
formed into whisky. Had Germany foregone beer and whisky every
single member of the population would have had, for every day

288 THE SEXUAL HISTORY OF THE WORLD WAR

of the war, thirty-six grams of barley and three-quarters of a pound
of potatoes. Professor Weichselbaum has criticized all these military
measures in the direction of partial control and pointed to the
reason for the lack of success. Let us quote his words: "In general
the authorities could not make up their minds that alcohol is the
enemy of the army and hence the regulations against the use of
the latter were not strictly adhered to; what is more, the tremen-
dous power of the alcohol industries kept up a steady agitation
against the limitation of alcohol."

Yet no matter how much people were convinced of the neces-
sity for alcohol during the war and no matter how much the offi-
cers of many armies were partial to champagne, the consequences
of drunkenness, insofar as they threatened or interfered with sac-
rosanct discipline, were mercilessly prosecuted. Thus, among the
Serbs, excessive indulgence in alcohol was punishable by flogging,
in the Austrian army usually with tying up, and among the Eng-
lish with "crucifixion." One reason why the military authorities
were so intent upon punishing drunkenness was their fear that
drunken soldiers would fall into the hands of spies.

Statistics show that the draconian measures just referred to were
justified, for according to Heusch, from 50 to 60 per cent of all
crimes in the army were attributable to excessive indulgence m
alcohol. (And most of these cases were acute, not chronic alco-
holics.)

Essentially the same conditions in respect to the consumption
of alcohol obtained in the halting-stations and in the hinterland.
Intoxication among the women in England reached a terrifying
proportion and was combated by women's organizations of that
land with the King personally at the head of the anti-alcoholic
campaign. In many French departments there was an enormous
increase in the consumption of alcohol and in the intoxication of
soldiers' wives.

The importance of tobacco is somewhat smaller but by no means
negligible. During the war Professor Arthur Schuller expressed
the opinion that, after the experiences with alcohol, some effort
should be made to limit the consumption of nicotine in the army.
At the front, smokes were available in large quantities and in the
military hospitals of the hinterland every holiday was celebrated
by gifts of tobacco, and any service contributed by the patients was
rewarded by cigarettes. Another military physician, Dr. Schurer,
who found a number of cases of nicotine poisoning after every

THE BESTIALIZATION OF MAN 289

spree, was particularly impressed by the fact that the majority of
the sufferers from this condition were youths, not yet twenty, for
which reason he advised that tobacco be withheld from all who
had not yet reached their twenty-first birthday.

This excessive indulgence in tobacco, which is prone to pass into
a passion, appears to have had a number of droll consequences
when the Central powers were already rationing out tobacco in
the hinterland, whereas there was still a copious supply of tobacco
available for the front. Thus we read the following anecdote in the
war novel of the Hungarian physician, Dr. Arthur Munk, con-
cerning his regimental physician: "Even during the fourth year of
the war, in the middle of 191 7, he refused to go home for any
price. No one could understand why he didn't want to knock off
for a little while since he had been serving in the army uninter-
ruptedly ever since mobilization. Only I knew why Dr. Weiss re-
fused to go home. And I will betray the secret: the regimental
physician was a passionate smoker, a nicotinist. It was that which
kept him back. The officer in charge kept him supplied with Egyp-
tian tobacco of a cheap grade on the principle that one never
knew when one would have to be at the mercy of the regimental
physician. Dr. Weiss smoked cigarettes from the moment he awoke
to the last moment before he closed his eyes in sleep; frequently
he smoked instead of eating. . . . Dr. Weiss was a prudent fellow
and had even laid up a store of cigarettes for days of need. At
the same time tobacco was exceedingly scarce back at home and
was being pracelled out so parsimoniously that smokers would work
for a couple of cigarettes; only women got enough to smoke. (That
the majority of women became accustomed to smoking during the
war is well known.)"

Other intoxicants were used to lesser degrees but it is obvious
that they were much more difficult to obtain at the front. But by
the same token they became more important for the hinterland
and undoubtedly the vast increase in the use of drugs was due to
the war. Many American soldiers became morphine addicts during
the war, many as a result of the treatment for gas poisoning. In the
English army, the addiction to cocaine seems to have increased at
the beginning of the war, according to W. B. Meister; and we
have already mentioned that English officers always had morphine
tablets on their person.

While regression produced by the environment arose as the
natural consequence of accommodating oneself to the milieu of the

2 9o THE SEXUAL HISTORY OF THE WORLD WAR

front, there were other men whose psyche had previously shown
symptoms of regression which made them particularly suitable for
life at the front. These were criminals and psychopaths. Every
belligerent nation accused the other of freeing its prisoners and
drafting them into the army and this accusation was, for the most
part, justified, because practically every nation, at the beginning
of the war, issued more or less extensive amnesties. And it is sig-
nificant that these ex-prisoners, for the most part, distinguished
themselves on the battlefield.

The distinguished criminal psychologist, Wulffen, speaks not un-
justifiably in this connection of a "transformation of criminal
impulses into military achievements." He pointed, for example, to
the case of one powerful soldier who had won the Iron Cross.
This man, who was a non-commissioned officer, had in pre-war
times been sentenced to some twenty jail terms for assault and
battery and, even during the war, while he was on furlough, he
manhandled the corporal and had to be sentenced to three months'
imprisonment accompanied by demotion in office. Another exam-
ple of a criminal who, as sharp-shooter, had shot down forty-five
Frenchmen but had himself sustained only slight wounds, for which
deeds of valor he had been awarded the Iron Cross as well as a
gold medal for bravery.

During the first year of the war, Hungary was aroused by an
extraordinary criminal case. A descendant of Bluebeard and a di-
rect predecessor of Haarmann had murdered a large number of
women and preserved their corpses in cans. The malefactor, who
could not be found at that time, turned out later to have been a
man by the name of Bela Kiss of Cinkota, which is near Budapest.
It was not until fairly recently that this mystery was solved. Ac-
cording to the newspaper reports, Kiss had enlisted in the army
under a false name, had been a brave soldier and had died a hero's
death, his heart bored through by an enemy bullet. Before he died,
he confessed his secret to one of his comrades who revealed it
after twelve years.

In connection with this whole question, Austrian military stat-
isticians came to the conclusion that those soldiers who had ever
served prison sentences before the war committed a smaller pro-
portion of crimes during the war and had a larger share in the
number of awards for heroism than the soldiers who had never
been arrested or imprisoned in their life.

The great American sociologist, Judge Lindsay, evinced an in-

THE BESTIALIZATION OF MAN 291

superable optimism when he wrote the following lines: "During
the war we freed our criminals from the prisons and sent them to
the front. Many of these performed deeds of heroism which in-
volved such conquest of oneself as to prove that when the court
had sentenced them it had been in error; and this heroism would
never have been discovered in the normal course of events. In
every one of these 'bad' people a whole fountain of goodness was
waiting to be released."

This conclusion would have been correct had the ex-criminal
performed at the front social deeds of philanthropy and goodness;
but with some slight exceptions, this is not the case, for what was
required of the soldier were quite opposite deeds, namely, of bru-
tality. Moreover, the fact that the second named category of re-
gressives, namely, psychopaths frequently made just as good front
line soldiers as ex-criminals, also speaks against Lindsay's view. Of
course, this lust of the psychopaths for war and fighting came to
clearest expression during attacks in hand-to-hand fights. These
people were not nearly as well satisfied with trench warfare. Mag-
nus Hirschfeld has related the following example of a psycho-
pathic intoxication induced by warfare (Psychopathischer Kampj-
rausch): "Once I had to examine a deserter who was feeble-
minded. He had been wounded in the West, and, after being
treated in the field hospital, he did not return to his troop which
was stationed in the trenches near Lille. After several weeks, he
was picked up at Girschau on the Weichsel. Asked why he had
deserted, he replied, T wanted to go to the Eastern front!' The
offensive warfare in the East was obviously much more congenial
to him than the trench warfare of the West. Without movement
the war wasn't any fun at all. His feeble-mindedness showed itself
in the childish notion that he could get to the Eastern front alone."
(Incidentally, this deserter, Wilhelm Peter J., was an interesting
pathological type who also practiced anal onanism. He had the
peculiar tendency of boring deeply with his fingers into his rectum
and then smearing the filth upon the bedsheets, shirts, walls, bed-
posts, etc. These grave acts led the judge to assume that this
aberration was connected with a homosexual impulse. But Dr.
Hirschfeld found that this was not the case: although there was
anal onanism, the essential character of these finger borings and
filth smearings was not purely a sexual one, but rested on a general
psychopathy.)

Professor E. Stransky's opinion on this subject was unequivocal.

292 THE SEXUAL HISTORY OF THE WORLD WAR

He thought that psychopaths did not belong in the army. "Psycho-
pathic inferiors, ethical defectives and criminal individuals cannot
be used for the army but, on the other hand, they are very valuable
in the zone of battle for their tenacity and daring." The number
of such individuals, he thought, was considerable, and they were
to be used in the hinterland only with extreme circumspection.

In this connection, we might also mention primitive peoples, as
the black French troops, whose conduct in the war was similar to
that just described. War is that type of enterprise in which ata-
vistic criminals, psychopaths unhindered by cultural repressions,
and all sorts of primitives, are much better suited than civilized
human beings who first have to go through the process of re-
gression.

In any discussion of the psychological changes induced by the
war there must be included the question of religion and supersti-
tion. If our theory of brutalization is correct, then the phenomenon
of regression must make its appearance in this realm as well; and
here the relation of superstition to religion is comparable to that
of primitive impulse to culture. The slipping back from the level
of civilization to that of primitive instincts must be a retrogres-
sion from spiritualized religiosity to unspiritual superstition. If we
can find such a retrogression, then we shall be entitled to speak
of brutalization in this realm also.

At the beginning of the war it was the opinion of all church
groups that the war would result in a tremendous revival of re-
ligious feeling. This was the more to be assumed since the maxim of
Luther that "Need teaches us to pray" applied both to the soldiers
surrounded by death, as well as to those left at home with their
agonized yearnings for their loved ones in the battlefield. War was
considered God's rod of chastisement, a misfortune which he had
brought upon humanity to convert them to the true faith. On all
sides there was prophesized a rebirth of religion ; but, alas, this prog-
nosticated emergence of a strengthened religiosity from the storm
of steel and blood proved to be erroneous. If today a Catholic
theologian writes that "the hope entertained by many at the be-
ginning of the war that a religious renaissance would ensue proved
to be an illusion; for it was impossible for material-mechanical
powers to produce spiritual-organic results," this appears like a
theological justification invented post-festum and comparable to
the fiasco of the theological justification of the war that had come
earlier. But this fiasco is, to no small degree, the result of the

THE BESTIALIZATION OF MAN 293

friendly attitude towards war entertained by all the churches of
every land.

We will confine ourselves to a few of the crassest and best-
known examples. In an essay, entitled Pity, by Pastor Gottfried
Traub we read the following: "The soldier who makes the enemy
unable to fight any longer is acting ethically. Every bullet that
does not reach its mark, prolongs the war and not only endangers
the life of the soldier himself, but also that of his comrades, and
so constitutes a new danger for wife, child and Fatherland. In such
a case, pity would be not only folly, but actually injustice. It may
appear moving when one writes from the field: T cannot shoot
this man'; yet this kind of thought is not humane but inhuman, for
by his hesitation in killing the enemy the soldier only kills a friend
instead of guarding life and peace."

Again, another cleric named Schettler, who was the chaplain of
one military division, wrote that the soldier has in his hands the
cold iron which he must manipulate without weakness and without
softness. "The soldier must kill, must drive the bayonet into the
ribs of the enemy, must shatter his trusty sword over the head of
the enemy — that is his holy duty, indeed that is his prayer to God."
Other messages of the same sort could be quoted ad nauseam but
there is no point in it; and even those preachments which were not
as bloodthirsty and martial were just as enthusiastic for war. To
these servitors of man's love for his fellow, pacifism and the yearn-
ing for peace were the real atrocities. Pastor Phillips wrote: "The
war is not Germany's misfortune but Germany's good fortune.
Thank God that the war came. I say it again today even in the
third year of the war. And thank God that we don't have peace yet;
and I say it again today, despite all the sacrifices. . . . The wounds
will soon be healed again and the evil will become worse than
before."

It is not difficult to imagine soldiers' reactions to such messages.
In the collection of student letters cited above, there appears the
following communication from a theology student, Karl Josen-
hans: "Every word that the parson of our city has written to one
of my comrades appears like mockery. He writes: 'We should not
wish for the war to end soon because it is not possible.' If only that
man could come here once and take a look at us."

After all this, it is not surprising that religion receded in influ-
ence and power, not only after the war but during it as well. At
a time when everything printed was subject to the strictest control

294 THE SEXUAL HISTORY OF THE WORLD WAR

of the censor, the following blasphemy could appear in the public
prints as part of a war novel:

"Our father who art in heaven — fire! fire again!
Thy kingdom come, thy will be done— these dogs!
And forgive us our trespasses even — as we forgive those
who have trespassed against us — shoot! shoot!"

In addition, the deportment of clerics of all sorts at, or more
correctly behind, the front lines was not such as was calculated to
arouse respect. Dr. Herbert Lewandowski wrote that there was
scarcely another figure who could represent the dubious and hypo-
critical role which the church played during the war better than
the field chaplain. He accompanied the armies in his elegant offi-
cer's uniform, and in his free time rode through the streets of the
halting-station mounted on a magnificent animal. Lewandowski
once snapped a photo of this well-fed hypocrite which he always
treasured as a precious symbol of the church's subservience to and
connivance with Anti-Christ.

A little extract from the letter column of Franz Pfemfert's tire-
less magazine Aktton, the only anti-war journal that appeared un-
der the strict German war regime, will give us another insight into
the Christian spirit of that time. Here is the letter:
Dear Nina:

If your Uncle Franz will ever try to tell you that in 19 18 the
feeling of shame was so little developed that professional followers
of Christ would call themselves "free-booters of war" (schlachten-
bummler) and would actually make a public exhibition of them-
selves in this capacity, you will not wish to believe it. Indeed, I may
myself be dubious about it at that time and even be inclined to
regard it as an anxiety dream conjured up during the dread days of
the war by some professional writer who wanted to appear clever.
Let me, therefore, insert herewith the original advertisement:

Monday, June 10, 19 18, eight o'clock in the evening
In the great hall of Guerzenich
Lecture with slides
Dr. Pater Expeditus Schmidt
A free-booter of war and field chaplain on the Western front
Tickets at 1 mark and .50 mk.

(This advertisement appeared in the Kolner Zeitung of June 9,
1918.)

THE BESTIALIZATION OF MAN 295

The role of the church in the war, a question which was fre-
quently treated in literature, as, for example, in the rather recent
and admirable volume of Fulster, entitled War and the Church,
found a parallel in the relation of art to war. This also inclined to
arouse and maintain enthusiasm for war. The fact that there were
a few distinguished exceptions does not alter our general thesis.
The regression of the creative impulse from the realm of art to the
realm of cheap propaganda, which was manifested on all sides, is a
symptom of regression comparable to all the others we have thus
far noted.

But while religion and art (and to a considerable degree science
as well) had fallen on evil ways, superstition, brought to the fore
and purveyed by clever business men, experienced a great period
of prosperity. The historian of these "masked religions," Bry, has
this to say concerning the flourishing of superstition: "At the very
time when the old order seemed to be most firmly fixed in the
saddle, when the spirit and soul of man was kept under the strictest
discipline, namely in war, superstition began to raise its head. The
soldiers and their relations at home began to wear amulets ; and the
belief in presentiments became widespread — 'Today nothing hap-
pens to me, today an accident is going to overtake me.' During a
time when desire for peace was strong in the hearts of many peo-
ple, even great newspapers, which ordinarily were protagonists of
enlightenment, did not hesitate to open their columns to prophe-
cies concerning the end of the war, the coming of peace, the con-
sequences of war, etc."

As far as the direct participants in the war are concerned, it is
easy to see that in an environment like theirs, where human life
continually hung by a hair, there was more place for superstition
than religion. Where the most senseless tyranny was enthroned,
even believers would come to doubt a just providence. We have
already hinted that such an atmosphere was particularly calculated
to scratch off the varnish of culture and to bring to the fore the
primitive man that lurks beneath every civilized being's conscious-
ness. The connections between the primitive-unconscious and the
neurotic-superstitious have been revealed by Freud in Totem and
Taboo and in other works. In those who participated in the World
War there came to expression the yearning of primitive man for
some security in his life, naked and unprotected against the threats
of superhuman powers. In this atmosphere, religion has very little
to say. The more there disappeared the trust in one God who sits

2 96 THE SEXUAL HISTORY OF THE WORLD WAR

upon a throne at some tremendous and inaccessible distance, the
more did people turn to the tangible idolatries of superstition^ If
anybody wants to identify such compulsive acts with religiosity,
then it would be better to drop any distinction between religion
and superstition. As an example of this we might quote a communi-
cation that appeared in the Judische Volks Zeitung for November
6, 1914: "A Ruthenian soldier stationed on the Galician front has
just written to his wife the following letter:

My Dear Wife:

I am getting along pretty well here and I don't lack for any-
thing. I hope you will do me a favor. Please go to the Jew Chaim
and ask him what is the meaning of Schema Jisroel. When the
bullets are whistling most fiercely around our heads, the Jews say
these words and actually the bullets seem to avoid them. Many of
us have fallen but practically all of them have remained alive. So
won't you please ask the Jewish man what these words mean so
that in case of necessity I may use them too?"

The various forms that were assumed by superstition during the
war, both at home and at the front, were inexhaustible and the
literature on this question is fairly rich. In his book, Recent Mys-
ticism, which appeared in 19 16, Bruno Grabinski pointed out that
a number of herbs and flowers were used by soldiers as protec-
tions against danger. Moreover, there were circulated in large
quantities in practically every army a great many so-called bless-
ings over bullets so that military authorities had to take steps
against this form of superstition. In other cases, however, the
authorities abetted business men in exploiting the great demand
for all forms of amulets, etc. Thus the sale of luck rings was abetted
by the Austrian military leaders.

A superstition that was very common in the Central states, and
which may be observed even today, was the aversion of three
people to take a light from the same match. Wiseacres said that this
notion was invented by match manufacturers in order to increase
their business; but insofar as this practice was common at the front,
there was at least another reason for it, namely, that it was inadvis-
able to leave even a little match flame burning long enough to have
three people get a light from it, for even this brief time might be
sufficient to arouse the attention of the enemy.

That such superstitions could become a mass psychosis is proven

THE B ESTI ALIZATION OF MAN 297

by the story of the angel of Mons, concerning which Bratl has
left us a full report. After the battles at Mons, there arose among
the English soldiers who had participated in the fighting the in-
explicable rumor that in the midst of the battles, angels had de-
scended from the clouds in order to separate the combatants. This
report, which very likely took its origin from the fever of a deliri-
ous soldier, spread like a prairie fire. Pretty soon the "angels of
Mons" had become a veritable epidemic and everyone asserted that
he had seen them clearly and some even described their clothing
and appearance. Finally, several Tommies asserted under oath that
the angels had been hovering in the clouds and had protected the
English soldiers from the enemy with outspread wings. The Lon-
don newspapers were full of these reports. Physicians and university
professors explained the phenomenon in long and very serious
articles, and it took a little while before the spirits of the men
calmed and the angels of Mons vanished from memory.

It is notorious that during the war years much money was made
by fortune-tellers, card-readers, magicians and exploiters of super-
stition. In Berlin, action finally had to be taken against the nuisance
of fortune-tellers. On this point Alfred H. Fried has remarked
significantly a propos of the prohibition of fortune telling in Ber-
lin: "Did this take place because of disgust at the disrespect to
science or because of the wish that during the war nothing should
be prognosticated concerning the future, neither truth nor false-
hood?"

A unique event was the exhibition of war superstitions and arti-
cles connected with them, such as amulets, protective letters, etc.,
arranged under the direction of the astronomical observatory at
Treptow. In France, there appeared at this time a magazine called
The Future of the Next Week which undertook to provide for its
credulous readers, week by week, a prophecy of what the next
eight days would bring forth.

The most popular amulets among the French soldiers were the
two historical fetishes, the little figures of Nenette and Rintintin;
and before we conclude this brief sketch of superstitions, let us
point out that the French were able to clothe this superstition with
an erotic and playful sort of disguise. Pierre MacOrlan wrote that
the tender marraines sent these figures to the front, and that the
motives of these acts was charming and innocuous. Like Till Eulen-
spiegel, Nenette and Rintintin were a portion of the genius of their
land, according to this writer, and they incorporated the idea that

2o8 THE SEXUAL HISTORY OF THE WORLD WAR

the weak creature is able to guard other weak ones against the
stupid misfortunes which human reason has called into being.

How the tendency of brutalization worked itself out in the erotic
realm, whether on the battlefield or in the hinterland, can be deter-
mined from the relevant data aside from the fact that it is a
logical conclusion from the premises of war. The achievements of
thousands of years of civilization in this realm have unquestion-
ably resulted in a more or less successful spiritualization and refine-
ment of the primeval instinct. This process of refinement the war
partly interrupted and partly destroyed and produced in the erotic
realm, as elsewhere, large numbers of obvious regressions. People
have spoken, and certainly not without justification, of the animal-
ization of morality and erotic relationship as consequences of the
war to which Professor Baumgarten has devoted a chapter in his
Carnegie book mentioned above. As instances of this barbarization,
he mentions the war marriages entered into without any scruples,
the utter recklessness of love life at the halting-station and at home,
the loosening and dissolution of marriage ties, etc. We add to that
all the manifestations of eroticism at the front as well as of love life
in the war brothels, prisoners' camps, hospitals and garrisons. Since
we have treated all these phenomena of the war already, we merely
want to affirm in this connection that this aspect of life can also be
regarded in the light of brutalization. Like all the other expressions
of life, love was not able to escape the devastating effects of the
war, which, as H. Vorwhal has said, "was a moratorium of ethics.
What centuries of evolution had accomplished in refining human
sensibility was eradicated and there ensued a wild, primeval bar-
barism, a liberation of utter animality and an enthronement of
atavistic criminal instincts which made possible the achievements
that were valid during the war." To the proof that this was true in
the realm of sexual morality, the great portion of this work is
dedicated.

Chapter 18

SADISM, RAPE, AND OTHER ATROCITIES

Modem vs. Past War Atrocities — Violation of All International Agreements
— Poison Gas Horrors — Poison Gas for Civilian Population in Future Wars
— Atrocities Committed by Turks, Kurds, Slavs, Etc. — Eroticism Behind
Numerous Cruelties — Mutilation of Corpses — Primitive Savagery of Black
French Warriors — Amputating Ears, Fingers, Etc. — Castration of the Enemy
— Examples of Feminine Degeneracy — Their Mutilation of Soldiers' Geni-
tals— Other Examples of Sadism and Torture — The True Story of the
Armenian Massacres — Atrocities in Eastern Prussia — Rape During the
World War — The Problem of War Babies

IN the course of our discussion we have emphasized that war,
because of reasons deeply founded in its own nature, as well as in
that of human nature, makes a bid for all the primeval instincts of
men which have come down to us as a heritage from prehistoric
times. Among these the instincts of cruelty and brutality, the im-
pulse to destroy, occupy the first place. Civilization and culture
have set strong limitations to the satisfaction of these human de-
sires. Whenever, in individual cases, they do manage to come to
expression, such manifestations are in normal times regarded as
anti-social, or, in other words, crimes, and as such are punished.
Criminology regards the latter as phenomena of regression, or
explosions of atavistic instincts.

War offers these atavistic instincts comparatively free play, and
encourages them through suggestion in drill and propaganda. More-
over, the motivation and vitalization of these primeval instincts
are facilitated by the unconscious suggestion of mass allegiance.
As a result of the tendency to imitate and to disappear within
a mass, the individual is automatically enabled to perform certain
deeds appropriate to ages long since transcended. The only dam
erected in war, against the instincts of destruction and cruelty
serves to direct this force against the enemy. Only the enemy must
be destroyed. Only his goods must be plundered and ruined, only
against him must acts of violence and brutality be carried out.

All other limitations rest on illusions. An attempt has been made
to differentiate between superfluous and necessary cruelty and, in
accordance with this attempt, the period before the war saw a
number of peace conferences which went at their job very seri-
ously. The post-war conferences continued this method on an-
other level in that they set up various programs of disarmament;
the outcome of this was that limitations were set to the expansion

299

3oo THE SEXUAL HISTORY OF THE WORLD WAR

of naval and land forces, but nothing whatever was done about
limiting the production of the two chief methods that will char-
acterize future wars— aircraft and poison gas. So in the decades
before the war there was created a public opinion which believed
that a humanization of warfare was possible. Even at that time,
experts warned against such illusions, which later proved so bitterly
disappointing. For example, a Prussian general stated that in war
the greatest inhumanity was the greatest humanity because it led
to a more rapid ending. Sternberg, the Prussian Secretary of State,
speaking in regard to the war in southwest Africa, stated emphat-
ically that humane warfare was an impossibility.

The utter uselessness of attempting to humanize war was mani-
fested clearly during the World War. On the one hand, the
primitive instincts which had been released could not be easily
controlled, and, on the other hand, the efforts at humanization
were rendered futile by the tremendous development of military
technique which took place after the outbreak of the World War.
In this way the great war presented a new factor in world history:
that whereas in former wars one had to contend with crimes and
war atrocities— of which, of course, there was no lack— now it was
the technical inventions. This applied to the methods of warfare,
prohibited by international agreement, whose employment by the
enemy was greeted with stormy disapproval but which, none the
less, was used by both sides alike.

The most important of all these was poison gas which will play
an important role in future wars. As to the World War, the
exhaustion of Germany, the supply of fresh troops by the United
States, and the employment of tanks prepared the way for the end
of the war in 191 8, but the decisive, direct cause for terminating
the war a year later was the introduction of American lewisite.
Poison gas was used on the Eastern front against the Russians three
months after the outbreak of the war. The effect on the surprised
Russian troops was terrific. In the hospitals and on the steps and
doorways of the hospitals the unhappy victims of this demoniac
device lay with blue, bloated faces and bloody foam at their nose
and mouth. About 90 per cent of them died from pulmonary edema,
a typical symptom in nearly every case of poison gas. Despite the
suffocating atmosphere during the ensuing days and weeks, the
German military authorities were satisfied with the results and a
few months later, in the early part of 19 15, this new method was
introduced on the Western front at the battle of Ypres.

SADISM, RAPE, AND OTHER ATROCITIES 301

Europe was aghast. The Times wrote of the "bestial warfare and
diabolical invention" which did not, however, prevent the British
from developing gases of their own; and three years later the
Daily Mail shouted for joy that the British and French gases were
being used more and more effectively. Besides, it is by no means
clear that poison gas was first used by Germany. The French
Ministry of War, as early as March, 19 14, ordered gas hand
grenades. Furthermore, as Haber has reported, the Parisian police
had been provided with tear gas in one of their raids against the
famous den of Apaches. We must remember that, in the World
War, gases were only used against soldiers, which will certainly
not be the case in the next war, for the ultimate consequence will
be the gassing of whole populations of cities. We cannot share the
sanctimonious horror at this form of warfare but must rather
direct all our horror against war itself for gas warfare is only a
consequence of technological development. But there is no doubt
that the soldier, poisoned by gas, who spits out his very gall or who,
after weeks of indescribable agonies, goes to ruin, is an original
creation of the World War and that war gas itself is the most
terrific atrocity which the great "steel bath" poured out upon us.

Similar horror greeted the aeronautic expeditions carried out
against great cities like Paris, London and Karlsruhe in which the
ancient distinction between combatant and civil population was
completely destroyed, and which introduced a new type of war-
fare where such a distinction is wiped out. Other distinctive atroc-
ities of the World War were the German submarine warfare and
the blockade carried out by the Allies against the Central powers
whose civilian victims, in Germany alone, have been estimated at
763,000. If, in addition, we remember the effects of modern fire-
arms and canons, the dimensions which mass-murder assumed in
this war, the consequences of a great naval battle — of which fortu-
nately there was only one — like that near Skagerrak which filled
the North Sea with corpses and changed its water into blood, then
we have some idea of the fearful atrocities of the war.

But let us turn from these things connected with the essential
immorality of war to the Sittengeschichte which has more to do
with the psychological aspect. It is well known that valuable art
treasures fell a prey to outbreaks of vandalism, but we share the
opinion of the pacifist Fried that, while there was no justification
for such rapine, it was virtually of no significance by comparison

302 THE SEXUAL HISTORY OF THE WORLD WAR

with the taking of the lives of myriads of human beings and that
everywhere war was destroying the sense of value.

We have already mentioned that, by the side of the mass crime
of the World War, the significance of all those atrocities which had
set their stamp upon earlier wars of mankind definitely receded.
The historical atrocities of war are more or less atavistic. Individual
acts of cruelty, often with a definite erotic cast, and rapes were
perpetrated during the World War principally by the more primi-
tive groups, such as Russians, South Slavs, Turks, Kurds, as well as
the colonial contingents.

As far as the instinct of cruelty is concerned, its connection with
eroticism is clear and appears in every variety of sadism. Now there
can be no doubt that it was sadistic drives that found their expres-
sion in the large number of cruelties perpetrated during the war.
In a great percentage of cases the lust for murder was nothing
more than masked passion, but today it is impossible to draw the
line between "normal" murder and that with orgiastic components.
Murders are frequently committed in peace times with premedi-
tation; often as a result of great emotion; and only a very small
percentage of murders are preceded by rape. Wulffen has said that
the lust for murder always comprises a sadistic element which
comes to clearest expression in murders preceded by rape, in which
passion and cruelty are indistinguishably connected. In the latter,
the sexual motives are clear, but in the lust for murder, they are
frequently disguised. During the war, outbreaks of cruelty and
destructiveness with a sexual undertone are more frequent than in
peace times, because there are more opportunities for satisfying
such impulses. Whereas in normal times the crime of murder con-
nected with rape appears only where there is a predisposition for it
(and even here rarely), the war makes possible the acquisition of
such a predisposition, by overcoming tendencies that normally
prevent the outbreak of such impulses. Sexology recognizes, be-
sides the primary sadistic lust for murder which eventuates in
murder preceded by rape, a secondary sort that arises as a result of
the impression of the war. In other words, war tends to excite the
libido in general and the sadistically colored impulses in particular.
Not only does the sadism of many soldiers result in sadistic actions,
whose acme is murder connected with rape, but conversely the
experiences of war can arouse in every man slumbering sadistic
components.

It is fairly easy to diagnose rape connected with murder after

SADISM, RAPE, AND OTHER ATROCITIES 303

examining the more intimate circumstances under which the mur-
der was committed. The important earmarks of such a murder are
the injuries or mutilations inflicted upon the corpse. Generally,
such a murderer is not content to inflict the fatal blow, but con-
tinues to inflict injuries upon his victim writhing in pain or already
dead. Many times the satisfaction is not afforded by the act of
killing itself, but rather in inflicting these wounds. (In his famous
poem on murder connected with rape, Baudelaire has spoken of
the new "lips" on the body of the murdered beloved.) Corre-
sponding to what we know from criminal psychology — that such
murders are, in general, committed by degenerates, inebriates and
epileptics — mutilations of the slain enemies during the World War
retained their atavistic character. They were carried out principally
by the primitive soldiers, and, above all, by the Turkos, the black
French warriors whose cruelty was especially notorious. Perhaps
it would be advisable to cite some examples of this conduct.

In one German journal it was recorded that, on the night of
September 6, a detachment of German soldiers found half a dozen
Turkos one of whom had in his knapsack a bunch of fingers
adorned with rings cut off from the hands of slain enemy soldiers,
while another had a head in his knapsack. Other Moroccan soldiers
were reputed to have collections of ears in their knapsacks. In his
Good-bye to All That, Graves has related the case of a Turko who
used to come for food to the chef of the officers' mess. One day
the latter told him, in jest, that no more food would be given him
unless he brought the head of a German. Shortly after the Turko
returned bearing such a head in his knapsack. The same chronicler
confirms the report that Turkos would cut off the ears of slain
enemies and carry them as trophies.

Mutilations such as castration of the slain enemy were thoroughly
sadistic. In previous wars, especially revolutionary struggles, this
practice was not infrequently perpetrated by women but it was
not always attributable to sexual passion. It was Wulffen's opinion
that the dominant motivation for this type of brutality was not
lust, but political fanaticism. The reason why violence is exercised
upon the sexual organs of the dying or dead enemy springs from
some obscure desire for vengeance. This mania derives these de-
generate women to destroy that very member of the helpless man
which had formerly been responsible for so much unhappiness to
women. Yet there can be no question that in the execution of these
sadistic acts, sexual excitations are aroused and gratified. Wulffen

304 THE SEXUAL HISTORY OF THE WORLD WAR

asserted that even in the World War such degenerate females
frequently castrated dead or gravely wounded soldiers who were
lying on the battlefield. Still, this was not a typical phenomenon
and literature has reported no such case. On the general theme of
the mutilation of genitals, Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld wrote as follows
during the war:

"At the beginning of the war, when the inflamed minds of people
were inclined to exaggerate the actual atrocities of the war, there
was considerable talk not only of eyes that had been torn out, hands
that had been cut off, but also of the excisions of genitals. As
far as I have been able to trace, I have not discovered a single proof.
That such criminal mutilations did take place in previous wars is
certain. The mutilation that was practiced against women, such as
cutting off the breasts, were the gory deeds of the Russian pogroms.

"Of course, the purpose of robbing men of their testicles, was
not only to destroy the possibility of reproducing one's kind, but
also the more or less conscious purpose of making the injured men
unfit for war service. Of all the castrates that I have seen, not one
seemed capable of meeting the rigorous demands of war."

It appears that among the Southern Slavs sadistic murders, muti-
lations, castrations and rapes were very frequent. Of course, we
are dealing here with peoples whose history, even in the twentieth
century, is one long, breathless fight for existence and whose bloody
Balkan ' wars, notorious for their cruelty, constituted a sort of
experiment for the World War. What is more, these peoples have
remained behind the rest of Europe in civilization and have retained
their primitive traditions. Only during the Great War did they
enter the stage of world history. At this point we wish to insert an
account of their war practices, based upon their century old tradi-
tions, from the pen of the eminent sexologist and ethnologist,
Professor Friedrich S. Krauss:

"For fifty-three months and eighteen days I worked in the war
hospitals of Vienna as teacher to the south-Slavic wounded, and
from their mouths I heard first-hand accounts of unspeakable atroc-
ities committed by them during the war. This material would make
a large work and here I wish to give only a few extracts from
the extensive material I have collected. I should like to preface my
account with the statement that the Balkan Slavs no less than the
Slavs of the north and the west are kindly and peaceful in their
peasant and middle-class groups, but their minds are more easily
poisoned. There was spread among the people various terrifying

SADISM, RAPE, AND OTHER ATROCITIES 305

tales concerning the cruelty of the enemy which aroused in these
simple gullible folk such a hatred of the enemy that for the welfare
of the Fatherland, whose highest and dearest achievements were
being threatened, it was thought necessary to extirpate the enemy
root and branch.

"The whole educational system of the southern Slavs was used
for arousing and propagating this brutal hatred. The majority of
these peasants are illiterate and derive what little they know of the
world from Guslar songs which, for the most part, celebrate the
fame of great destroyers, murderers, executioners, vandals and
founders of states. Thus a Bosnian Guslar ballad tells how the
Christian champion, Lukas, was ambushed by the Moslem knight,
Rustan, and his horde in the mountains and how he killed them
and took Rustan's head along as a trophy of victory. Even at that
time, it was a common practice not to kill hated enemies, whom
one had captured alive, but to tear the skin from their bodies.
Lukas varied (and accelerated) the effects of the latter process by
cutting off, to quote the words of the song, 'the life' or the penis
(in French also one says, la vie). And so, before Lukas left the field
of battle, he cut off the organ of every one of his fallen foes. Why?
For two reasons. First, because he believed that by carrying around
this booty of his enemy, the life of the conquered, which means
their power and might, would be transferred to him, the conqueror;
secondly, because in this way, even if the enemy should come to
life or recover, it would be impossible for him to propagate any
more enemies or avengers; and thirdly, because with these trophies
one could show off before one's friends, much as Occidental war-
riors take pride in their medals, crosses, orders and high-sounding
titles.

"One day when there were about 120 wounded in my barrack
schoolroom, one of my men arose and began to sing a ballad de-
nouncing war. After this was completed another one of my pupils,
a man of forty, said the following: 'Now I am in the barracks for
the venereally diseased. At home I have a wife and three children.
I was so happy with them. How will I be able to show myself
there? There were four of us in Serbia together one evening and
suddenly a Serbian girl approached us and begged for a piece of
bread, saying that she hadn't eaten all day. In return for this, she
declared herself ready to give herself to us. Each of us gave her a
piece of bread and a bit of wurst. All four of us were infected by

3o6 THE SEXUAL HISTORY OF THE WORLD WAR

her; I was brought to Vienna, but I don't know where the other
three went to.'

"A Serbian who belonged to the academic class once told me
how the Serbians had lived in Macedonia. They used to swoop
down on a town, make all the men shorter by a head and then
consort with the wives and daughters, with no regard to religious
or national affiliations. As a matter of fact, veritable markets for
women's flesh were established here. Whole groups of pretty women
were sold to Greece and even to India, and this business flourished
tremendously. On the soil of Macedonia, the Serbians, Bulgarians
and Greeks fought out their feuds. The chief impetus to these was
given by the Komitadzijes, bands of guerrillas, desperate, violent
men dedicated to avenging the atrocities perpetrated against the
native population. The women of the oppressors were raped and,
if boys and men were captured, they were raped in the same homo-
sexual fashion as the enemy practiced.

"It must not be thought that castration was perpetrated only by
the Serbians among the Slavs, as Bulgarians engaged in the same
practice. Although it is ridiculous to read such a statement, the
Serbians used to reproach the latter with this brutality. The protest
of the Serbians was perhaps justified because the Bulgarians muti-
lated boys also — which violated good old South Slavic war prac-
tice. Such things the Serbians would not do; thus a Guslar ballad
of my collection describes the visit of Serbian knights, among some
of the leaders of Bulgaria, in the course of which the invaders
simply put every living thing to the sword.

"In a democratic newspaper of Belgrade there once appeared a
statement of the Serbian case against the Bulgarians so far as moral
justification was concerned. It was virtually a catalogue of atrocities
perpetrated by the victorious Bulgarians against the conquered
Serbs. Among other things, this statement accuses the Bulgarians of
killing mothers and leaving the infants at their breasts until the
poor things also died; of cutting off the sexual parts of male chil-
dren and beating women upon the naked abdomen.

"To describe fully all the details of the manhandling and ravish-
ing of captured enemies would be a worthwhile project, but it is
repulsive to me to describe the manner in which the sadistic con-
querors took delight in the sufferings of the helpless entrusted to
their keeping — how they would hurt them with malicious words
and actions and finally abuse them sexually. . . . During the war
there were also cases where prisoners were tied to a tree and their

SADISM, RAPE, AND OTHER ATROCITIES 307

sexual organs torn off or covered with honey in order to attract
ants and flies. Another repulsive manifestation of cruelty was the
practice of dipping into human excrement all the food that was
given to the prisoners-of-war. Prisoners, crowded together in ex-
tremely close quarters, had to attend to their natural needs in the
little space which was assigned to them for living. Another bit of
cruelty was to feed the prisoners herrings and salted fish, and then
deprive them of water, a cruelty worthy of ranking beside any of
the refined tortures of the Inquisition.

"All that I have here set forth is only a superficial sketch indica-
tive of the material that I have gathered in the course of many
years, and which I am constrained to publish as an ethnologist and
investigator of primitive human impulses."

At this point we must treat the two greatest mass crimes of the
World War — that in Galicia and that in Armenia. Both show the
same sadistic trend and, in general, exhibit marked similarity. In
both cases it affected a border people whose patriotism was doubted
by the oppressors. While it is true that the Galician atrocities
of the Austrian military authorities do not approach the incredible
brutalities of the Turkish overlords against the Armenians, in
point of scope and comprehensiveness, it is, none the less, true
that unrestrained military bestiality was responsible for such sacri-
fices of human life in the eastern portion of the Danubian mon-
archy as eclipsed all the atrocities committed by the German
invaders of Belgium. From Fritz Wittel's novel, Zacharias Pamperl,
which contains much truth, we quote a description of a typical
case which was an every-day occurrence in eastern Hungary and
Galicia after the beginning of the offensive.

"Directly behind the city the troops received the command to
halt and wait for further orders. Everyone was speaking of spies
and treachery, of buried telephone wires, of light signals which the
peasants were exchanging with the enemy, of sniping, etc. The
dragoons entered the town from the rear, and, as they came by a
little groups of peasants, one of the dragoons shouted out that among
those peasants there was one who had shot their sergeant-major of
cavalry from behind. Thereupon the dragoons drew their swords
and slew everyone of the group — men, women and one girl — so
that no one remained alive. The heap of corpses lay piled in a great
lake of blood which was growing continually larger as the blood
poured from the open wounds.

"In the evening another case arose for consideration. In the

3o8 THE SEXUAL HISTORY OF THE WORLD WAR

pockets of a sixteen-year-old boy had been found a few rubles.
How did they come to him? Obviously he must be a spy. A num-
ber of other cases were found where the evidence was somewhat
clearer and all of these people were accused of collusion with the
enemy. No pity need be shown for these people as they were all
Russified. If so many braver men had died, why shouldn't these
fellows be hung? Such was the feeling among the corps com-
manders. The judges could do nothing against this feeling, which
so far as hanging was concerned, was only carrying on an old
Austrian tradition. His Excellency, the commander, became angry
with a few judges who dared to express the opinion that penalties
should be imposed only when evidence was available. War could
not be fought that way, he insisted. It was necessary to set exam-
ples, and there was no reason why a few devils shouldn't swing.
Austria was not unified like the other nations; her boundary and
minority groups everywhere were inclined by religion, language,
education and culture to the enemy of whose race they were
members. This was no time for pity or justice; there was only one
way to keep these 'subversive' people down— the iron-hand of the
gallows. And so, late that evening, the five who had been accused
of contact with the enemy were hanged in a public square."

More intimately connected with our theme than the atrocities
in Galicia, where the sadistic impulses can only be guessed at, is
the extirpation of the Armenian population of Turkey which was
undoubtedly, as Lord Bryce stated, "the hugest single crime that
was committed in the whole course of the war." The 1,200,000
civilian victims of this mass-murder constitute murders, rapes,
thefts, pandering and traffic in women's flesh, and cruelty un-
paralleled in the history of the world. _ _

When the war began, there were about two million Christian
Armenians in the Turkish domain, and about one and a half mil-
lions in Russian territory. Although the Turkish Armenians were
loyal to their land, a fact explicitly recognized by the then min-
ister of the interior, Talaat Pascha, the Young Turkish government,
which owed its very existence in no small degree to the Armenians
who constituted the largest professional group in Turkey and par-
ticipated in all progressive movements, decided to get even with
the "hateful enemy within the land." Times were especially favor-
able for this.

Through its entry into the war on the side of the Central powers,
Turkey had been released from the control of Europe which had

SADISM, RAPE, AND OTHER ATROCITIES 309

in 1878 guaranteed protection to Armenians. Early in 1915, after
Armenian leaders had been arrested and all men capable of bearing
arms conscripted into the Turkish army, all remaining Armenians
living in Turkey were ordered deported. The ostensible purpose
of this deportation was to assign the Armenians new dwelling places
in Arabia. However, a coded cable from the Pascha already men-
tioned (Tailirian, an Armenian student, assassinated him in Berlin
in 1922, and was acquitted), contained the shameless directions:
"Special diligence must be shown in extirpating the persons in
question (the Armenians). . . . The place of exile is Nowhere. I
order you to act this way." The carrying out of this deportation
order, which Turkish officials tried to justify by totally false accu-
sations of armed Armenian uprisings, was of terrifying bestiality.
In every place, aside from a few in European Turkey, the Armenians
were notified of their impending exile, given only a few days'
grace in which to sell their belongings and were then driven out
of the cities and villages in hordes under the escort of Turkish
gendarmes. The men who marched alone were attacked in the
mountainous districts through which they had to pass in their
trek by semi-savage nomad tribes, principally Kurds, who robbed
and then murdered them. Great numbers of women, girls and
children, when they were not captured on the way and sold in the
slave market, died of hunger, disease, exhaustion or were killed
by the gendarmes and Kurds. In Aleppo there was a camp for
these deported, and concerning the conditions at this place we wish
to quote the following words from a German memorandum which
was read at the Peace Conference by Wilson:

"Caravans which, when they left home, comprised thousands of
individuals, had been reduced to only a few hundred when they
came to Aleppo. All along the journey the fields were strewn with
black swollen naked corpses, for they had been robbed of their
clothes, befouling the atmosphere with their stench. Some, tied
back to back, served as a dam to the Euphrates or food for the
fish. . . . These victims died all the deaths of the earth of all the
centuries. I have seen people, crazed by hunger, who ate for food
the excrement of their own body; women who cooked the flesh
of their newly-born children; girls who had cut open the still warm
corpses of their mothers to seek the money which the dead had
swallowed in fear of the Turkish gendarmes. In decayed caravans,
these horrible relics of humanity lay among heaps of half-rotten
corpses, waiting for death. How long could they sustain their

3io THE SEXUAL HISTORY OF THE WORLD WAR

miserable existence with seeds culled from the dung of horses or
with grasses?"

To illustrate the cruel treatment to the forced marchers, we cite
from the book by Nansen, that noble friend of humanity: "Of the
18,000 deported from Kahrput and Siwas, only 350 reached Aleppo;
and of the 19,000 who had set out from Erzerum only eleven
remained alive." With what sadistic cruelty this result was achieved
is clearly portrayed by these two harrowing instances which have
been culled from a multitude of similar examples:

"According to the account of an Armenian member of a work
battalion, the men of their village were led out under heavy guard.
At the outskirts of the town there lay a pile of clothing which
they recognized as having belonged to their comrades. Now all of
them were commanded to remove their clothing, retaining only their
shirts. When this had been done, they were bound together, two
by two, with bloody ropes and then commanded to march. After
a few moments' march, during which they passed a pile containing
the bodies of their massacred comrades, a number of whom were
still quivering in their last death agonies, they came to a projecting
rock. Now the gendarmes and Turks, who had driven them from
the city, denounced them as traitors to their country and removed
their ropes. One after another, the unfortunate victims were com-
pelled to jump from the rock— passing between two gendarmes
who struck the victims with a long knife before they jumped."^

A twelve-year-old-boy, who was deported, told the following
story:

"On the way one of my girl cousins got a bad foot. When she
was unable to walk any further, the gendarmes gave her a kick,
knocking her off a cliff. Her mother who was present also had
swollen feet but her body was strong. She did not wish to go any
further either but the gendarme drove her on and she was one of
the few people who remained alive. The other persons who were
unable to proceed were left by the wayside where they either
starved to death or were slain by the gendarmes. When a young
woman or a girl remained behind, a gendarme would generally
ride back to her and soon we would hear frightful screams. At such
times my aunt would say it was better that her daughter had been
hurled into the abyss by the gendarme. But we were very sad over
it since she had always been so lovely to us children and was so
very young."

The arrested leaders of this martyred people did not fare any

SADISM, RAPE, AND OTHER ATROCITIES 311

better. All the tricks of the inquisition were used with them. The
priest, Falikian of Everek, was executed by means of a vise, or
pressing machine, which would every day be turned on for a little
while. Another man, Agop Kaitangan, has reported the following
concerning his imprisonment: "For many days I was bastinadoed
and it got so that I actually preferred death to this life of torture.
One day while I was being tortured I asked for permission to go
out to perform a natural function. I had a knife with me so I cut
an artery and opened up my sexual organs. My blood flowed un-
stanched and I fell into a faint. They hastened to my help and
immediately resumed the torture. In insane desperation I tore my
organ from its moorings and hurled it at the head of the official
who was torturing me."

The path of sorrows of this nation of two million condemned to
martyrs' deaths was literally strewn with the corpses of deflowered
women. The facts are too horrible to need comment. We shall cite
a few of these and only desire to say that these are not creations of
a fevered imagination, but cold facts. The gendarmes of the escort
who had complete power over the life and death of their human
victims abused, in wholesale fashion, the girls and the women, and
then murdered them. At the end of 19 15 there lay on the dam,
between Tel Abiad and Rasul-Ain, heaps of naked, ravished female
corpses. Many of these had cudgels driven into their rectums.

One of the deported told the following story: "The chief of the
escort saw, in the caravan, a young girl whom he desired to have.
He approached us with a company of Kurds and said, 'Give me
the girl at once or I shall turn you all over to these fellows.' His
attitude showed that he would not hesitate to fulfill his threat. This
was the price for the rescue of the whole caravan. We threw our-
selves at the feet of the young girl and begged her to consent. She
remained silent, then burst into tears, but finally consented. ... I
was deported together with my mother. Halfway along the journey
a man, a Tscherkessian, asked for some money which my mother
insisted she didn't have. He then began to torture her until she
finally gave him six livres which she had hidden in an intimate
portion of her body. ... He then cut off one of her arms, then
the other; still unsatisfied, before my eyes, he cut off both her feet,
then he violated me before the eyes of my dying mother. . . . The
Kurds raped an enormous number of young Armenian girls. Those
who resisted were slain, and the beasts satisfied their monstrous
passion even on the dying ones. . . . Thus one. sixty-year-old man

3i2 THE SEXUAL HISTORY OF THE WORLD WAR

noticed a pretty girl of sixteen who would not give herself to him
She was offered the choice between the old man and death, and
refusing to submit, she was slain."

Those girls and women who escaped rape and murder by the
escort were laid hold of by the Mohammedan inhabitants in the
districts through which their procession passed and were either
put into harems or sold into slavery. Even children met the same
fate many being converted to Islam and disappearing. There grew
up a traffic in girls and children such as had not been seen since
the crusades In the Mohammedan cities, markets were held at
which Armenian girls were sold cheap. Virgins sold for twenty
piasters while young women or widows went for five. One of the
deported girls, Miss Torikian, related that the Musselmen of the
neighborhood took girls from the caravans. Every evening the
Kaimakam and his aids would arrange orgies at which young
girls were forced to dance naked, those who refused were slam by
the bastonnade. Of another caravan it is related that, after the
infants and children were stolen, the mothers were compelled by
violence to surrender their young daughters. Frequently the hands
of the mother were chopped off in order to tear the daughter away.
Thereupon the clothes of the latter were torn off and m the open
field before the eyes of all, she was ravished. All the pretty girls
and 'women wre driven into harems, and eye-witnesses related that
these women were exhibited naked in the market of Aleppo and
other cities where they were sold to the harem master who paid

the highest price.

The American consul at Kharput reported in 191 5 that many
persons who scarcely retained any vestige of human appearance
and were hardly able to drag their feet along, had arrived at
Kharput from Erzerum. No sooner had they arrived than two
Turkish physicians appeared to select any young girls that might
still be serviceable for Turkish harems. These he turned over to the
harem dealers. At the same time a physician, Niepage, saw numer-
ous Armenian girls hiding in Christian homes of Aleppo. These
girls had by some chance, been saved from death, either by lying
somewhere so exhausted that they had been taken for dead and
abandoned or because some Europeans had had the opportunity of
purchasing the unhappy one for a few marks from the Turkish
soldier who had raped her last. A little girl of fourteen was taken
into the house of a Mr. Krauss who was in charge of the warehouse
of the Bagdad Railroad at Aleppo. This poor child had been

SADISM, RAPE, AND OTHER ATROCITIES 313

violated by Turkish soldiers so many times in one night that she
had completely lost her mind. After the war, at the instigation of
Lord Bryce, who brought up the Armenian question in the House of
Lords three days after the Armistice, November 13, 1918, an
attempt was made to liberate from the harems these Armenian
women, but it met with little success.

The Turkish government, which was completely responsible for
the mass-murder of the Armenians, cannot be held responsible for
the most extensive traffic in women that the twentieth century
can show. The ruling powers at Constantinople were actuated by
the desire to extirpate all Armenians and they included women
and children. In September, 191 5, Talaat Pascha sent the follow-
ing message to the local authorities of Aleppo: "We learn that
some of the officials, as well as the populace, are marrying Ar-
menian women. I forbid this strictly and insist that women of
this sort be divorced and sent into the desert."

The question naturally arises how these atrocities could have
taken place under the eyes of Germany, the ally of Turkey, whose
influence in the latter country during the war was no small one.
That the Germans could have been influential in restraining the
brutalities of the Turks is proven by the example of Freiherr von
der Goltz who, we should remember, protested against the impend-
ing deportation of the Armenian residents of Mosul and actually
saved them from a like fate. Many German soldiers in that land
saw the atrocities and preserved them for all time in photographs
which they took. Such soldiers entertained definite opinions on these
inhumanities which were in no way dictated by political or official
considerations. That this was so is proven by authentic reports
like the following from the pen of an eye-witness:

"We were about ten thousand German soldiers and had received
the command to march in the direction of Kat-ul-Amara. In our
midst were Osmanian officers and soldiers who served as inter-
preters and guides. Our path lay through the desert and we marched
along the length of the Euphrates and the Tigris. In the evening
we pitched our tents in the desert. One evening our Osmanian com-
rades disappeared. We thought they had gone to a religious service;
but they returned with two hundred Armenian women and young
girls whom they had obtained from a caravan camped in the
vicinity. Our tents lay nearby and when night came, hell began
to burn in our midst. All through the night German officers and
soldiers were prevented from sleeping by heart-rending calls for

3i4 THE SEXUAL HISTORY OF THE WORLD WAR

help and shrieks of ravished victims. But we were unable to inter-
vene for our military leaders had forbidden us to interfere with
the ''internal" affairs of the Turks, so we had to remain silent
while our sisters-in-faith were abused. . . . When we awoke the
next morning we saw to our horror that all the young girls and
women who had served to satisfy the animal lusts of these brutal
tyrants, were dead, each one having had her throat cut."

Actually the German authorities must bear a large share of the
responsibility for the atrocities perpetrated against the Armenians
during the war. The people in Germany knew nothing about these
"heroic" deeds of their Oriental ally, although Dr. Johannes Lep-
sius, who six years later served as an expert witness for the defense
in the Tailirian trial, issued a confidential brochure in 1916 de-
scribing numerous atrocities committed by the Turks, and Lieb-
knecht had already introduced this subject in the Reichstag. But
even as late as June, 191 5, the Wolff News Agency dared to make
the following statement at the direction of the higher authorities:
"The reports of neutral envoys concerning the slaughter of Ar-
menians are lies and fiction; they are inventions of the Allies."
This point of view was maintained for a long while. The famous
collection of Kurt Muhsam, entitled How We Were Duped, con-
tains two orders of the censors dating from October and December
of that year: "Concerning the Armenian atrocities, the following
is to be said: Our friendly relations with Turkey must not be
endangered by these matters which concern only the internal
administration of that land."

"Concerning the Armenian question the best policy to pursue is
that of silence. The deportment of the Turkish government in this
matter is not particularly praiseworthy."

It will be noticed that the trend of these orders, especially the
second, is slightly different from earlier directions and policy, but
no radical change can be detected.

In this connection we should mention that the plan of deporta-
tions was originally conceived by a German, the Orientalist, Paul
Rohrbach, who suggested that the Armenians be transplanted from
the Eastern provinces to the territory of the Bagdad railway, in
order to found there an industrial line for the German Oriental
market of the future. Naturally this scholar was not concerned
about the manner in which his plan would be carried out; but the
Allies were quick to speak of "German plan, Turkish work," and
not without justification. An interesting contribution to the war

SADISM, RAPE, AND OTHER ATROCITIES 315

psychosis of the church is the attitude of the German pastor,
Traub, who said: "Inasmuch as much propaganda is being dissemi-
nated in behalf of Armenia, we are constrained to say that love for
the Fatherland is of chief importance and if the Armenians do not
respect this virtue we need not be concerned about them."

Of course there were some Germans who dared to protest against
the inhumanity of their war government. We recall the case of the
newspaper correspondent, Dr. Harry Stuermer, who saw these
atrocities and courageously expressed his feelings: "Germans with
only a slight feeling of humaneness and pity cannot help blushing
at the cowardice of our government toward the Armenian situa-
tion. The mixture of unscrupulousness, cowardice and shortsighted-
ness which our government has demonstrated, in the matter of the
Armenians, is alone sufficient to undermine the political loyalty
of any thinking man who has any personal feeling for humanity
and civilization. Certainly few Germans will be able to bear lightly
the judgment of world history that the incredibly cruel destruction
of a culturally valuable people, numbering a million and a half
souls, coincided with the period when German influence in Turkey
was strongest."

A sexual crime, always connected with war, is rape, concerning
which we must add a few facts. In peace times, acts of rape are
attributed to sexual hyperaesthesia, that is to unusual strength of
the sexual urge, and in some cases to sadistic impulses. Hyper-
aesthesia can be congenital or may be temporary due to excessive
indulgence in alcohol or protracted sexual abstinence. Both these
factors were present during the war. We have seen that in the
World War there was much drunkenness and forced abstinence in
the trenches. In addition, there was the continuous stimulation of
the sexual sphere through the bloody work of war and the sight of
violent acts. For this reason this war also saw numerous cases of
rape perpetrated on all fronts by the soldiers of all armies. They
did not occur more frequently because, on the firing line, women
were scarce and behind the front the satisfaction of the sexual
impulse was not difficult; and hence there was no need of violence.
The field- and halting-station brothels, no matter how disgusting,
diminished the number of cases of rape during the war.

Remarkably enough, this was a disappointment to many. Public
opinion was set on having a vast increase of this crime in the war
areas. The erotic fantasy of the time wallowed in deeds of violence
in the sexual realm which were attributed to the enemy, particu-

3i6 THE SEXUAL HISTORY OF THE WORLD WAR

larly to the Germans in Belgium. The soldiers of every land went
to war with the conscious or unconscious resolve of indulging
upon the field of honor in the pleasures of love and, whenever
necessary, forcibly seizing them. "Women and cities must sur-
render." While the Germans were represented as embodying all
vice and crime, Italian fliers on the Southwest front dropped down,
among the Austrian soldiers, leaflets informing them that, while
they were fighting against Italy, the Russians would make a
triumphant entry into Hungary, occupy their houses and violate
their wives. A French poem of that time began with the words:
"Germans, we shall possess your daughters."

More remarkable was the attitude of women, although it corre-
sponds to the view of sex psychology. For the women, the brutality
and aggressiveness of the man is, to a certain degree, accompanied
by pleasure. The reasons for this are obvious. The conquest of
woman and the act of copulation, presuppose, on the man's part,
a definite joy in attacking. The woman who, in the act of love, is
the one that gives herself, reacts to this with passion. The normal
woman desires to be conquered by the man, to be forced; and only
one step separates her from the female masochist who wishes, not
only to be overwhelmed, but also to be raped and brutalized.
Though the science of sex psychology is young, this point is
ancient, for as far back as two thousand years ago, the great
teacher of love, Ovid, mentioned this matter to his disciples.

This sentiment, happily expressed by the Roman poet and fre-
quently substantiated by sexology, renders understandable the con-
duct of large numbers of women during the war. The average
woman sees in war a series of brutal acts carried out by man.
These have for her certain pleasant erotic undertones which arouse
her sex interests. Ever since Wedekind depicted, upon the stage,
the heroine of his Death Dance— the hysterical woman who com-
bats the traffic in girls, but unconsciously desires herself to be sold
or ravished— this motif has been used in literature.

One of the most popular anecdotes of the war-years was said
to have taken place in Galicia. When the Russians occupied this
town in 1914, a band of Cossacks entered a house. The mother of
the household watched them in great fright as they plundered
everything, including all the food and drink they could find.
When they ended their feasting and were about to go, the lady of
the house stood at her door amazed and called out, "Don't you
rape?" Burghard Breitner, who is our authority for the seriousness

SADISM, RAPE, AND OTHER ATROCITIES 317

of this observation, related, in his Siberian diary, that Russian
newspapers published reports of the violation of a Russian nurse
by German soldiers. "Since that report was printed in the news-
paper, all the nurses at the front demand their due, and I, for one,
am not at all amazed, considering the observations that have been
made till now. War is war, an old anecdote has said, and many
women desire more from this tremendous struggle than the report of
the death or loss of their husbands. The matter of war children
certainly is too large a consideration to be overlooked or concealed
in this connection."

With the hysterical tendency to confuse reality with imagination,
the predilection of woman for masculine aggressiveness led to
false erotic charges. This is common in criminal practice. In such
accusations unsatisfied sexuality expresses itself by representing
wholly fictitious facts as real. This representation has passional
nuances and satisfaction for the accusing person. How far the
boundary between the wish-dream and reality can disappear in such
cases appears from the investigation by J. R. Spinner of imaginary
pregnancy, only this appears infrequently, whereas rape, proceed-
ing from a hysterical imagination, is quite typical and was more
frequent in the over-stimulated erotic atmosphere of the war.
Wherever enemy soldiers appeared, there were immediately women
and girls who claimed they had been raped. The suggestive effect
of propaganda strengthened considerably the hysterical disposition
already present. It cannot be denied that in a majority of these
cases, the accusers were conscious liars desirous of concealing a
sexual dereliction, and to be regarded as martyrs to the enemy
rather than fallen women. In addition, there were many women in
every land who capitalized their patriotism.

In the early months of the war, England was overrun by Belgian
women claiming they were victims of German brutality. When-
ever an investigation was made, these accusations were usually
found to be unjustified. Nevertheless, they were continually made,
for hysteria became contagious and there were times when the
reputation of having served as an object of German brutality was
connected with considerable moral and material advantages. As
an example of imaginary rape, let us quote the following case,
reported by Dr. Marcinowski, from an occupied area of France:
"A short time ago a pretty French girl came to me for advice. She
belonged to a family of refugees of which there were about 1600
in my district in northern France. Several months before, these

3i8 THE SEXUAL HISTORY OF THE WORLD WAR

people had fled from the line of battle and from their home that
was destroyed. The bombardment of their residence lasted three
days and, in desperation and terror the whole family, comprising
four people, determined to commit suicide by the aid of a coal fire.
During the bombardment she happened to be unwell. Later on,
German soldiers rescued her but since that time she never had her
period and she feared that the German soldiers might have abused
her while she was unconscious. This fear drove her to me. Yes,
she had had intercourse once with a friend. The investigation was
negative. The rape she came to complain about was a dream which
her imagination, the narcotization by coal gas, and the whole ex-
traordinary situation had created for her. Sapienti sat."

Although rape was in most cases not even investigated, much
less established, practically all the warring nations engaged in con-
troversies that lasted for years on what was to be done with "war
children," the fruits of the acts of rape carried out by enemy
soldiers upon native women. It is characteristic that these discus-
sions were incited by women and carried out by them with the
greatest enthusiasm. One cannot help harboring the rather ungallant
suspicion that this problem, whose practical solution was exercising
these ladies so much, must have brought a certain satisfaction, for
while they were theorizing about it, they were able to wallow in
descriptions of violations that were supposedly carried out.

This is especially true of the women of France where the ques-
tion of these "war children" (who, incidentally, were scarcely found
there in reality), known there as indesirables, was debated with as
much seriousness as though it concerned a large proportion of the
population. The liveliest part of the question was concerned with
whether, in such cases, termination of the undesired pregnancy
and the' elimination of the fruit of the forced embrace, should be
allowed. There were even certain priests who espoused this point
of view. The Montmartre poet, Monthesus, composed a poem
which expressed the feelings of the raped woman and called science
to aid in freeing the victims of violence from their burdens. The
savant, Grandjux, went even further and spoke of an "infection
through Teutonic spermatozoa" and the necessity of a law for
"deteutonization" in the interests of the victims and for the pro-
tection of the race. The French government, which was quite clear
about the practical unimportance of the question, merely allowed
the reception of these indesirables into Federal nurseries and prom-

SADISM, RAPE, AND OTHER ATROCITIES 319

ised to pay all costs connected with delivery of these raped mothers
as well as the education of the children.

Germany also engaged in protracted intellectual activity con-
cerning the fate of these children who, for the most part, were
not only unborn but unconceived. The actual incentive to these
discussions was provided by the Russian campaign in East Prussia
where cases of rape certainly did occur. Here the German League
for Protection of Mothers took up the question. In a petition to the
government, they requested a "special law in behalf of the women
and girls raped by members of the enemy army," whereby the
latter would be allowed an abortion in cases where they could
prove rape. Certain groups saw, in this petition and the activities
carried on in its behalf, the realization, in an indirect way, of the
well-known demand of radical feminists for the right of woman to
her own body and asserted that "at the present time there was less
room for this principle than ever before."

Egon Erwin Kisch has described, in his Winter Camp of a De-
feated Army, his conversations with the inhabitants of a Galician
village which had been occupied by the Russian army and then
recaptured by the Austrians. "They had remained in their Galician
village when the Russians first came because they thought to them-
selves, 'The Russians are also people.' But when the latter came
they broke into Jewish houses, robbed at the point of a revolver,
beat the men, and sought, as their chief booty, girls and women.
They even dragged children into adjoining rooms and raped them.
Once as the Cossacks approached a certain house, the girls all hid
but when the Russians began to beat the father and pound him on
the head with the handles of their bayonets, the daughters burst
out of their hiding place with a loud outcry and begged that their
father be released. They gained their request but two of them
were immediately raped. The third jumped out of the window and
fled over the half-frozen field where she remained standing all
night long, listening to the Cossacks search for her. Another time
they threatened to split the head of a baby unless the mother would
reveal to them the hiding place of her thirteen-year-old daughter.
Another woman had received saber cuts on her head to make her
reveal the hiding place of her daughter. In answer to a request for
protection, the Commandant, a Russian count (most of the officers
of these Cossack divisions were aristocrats) replied that the villagers
first had to send a deputation of young girls and then he would
consider whether something might not be done in their behalf.

320 THE SEXUAL HISTORY OF THE WORLD WAR

At the approach of the Austrians, a part of the Jewish population
hid in the boiler of a factory, preferring death by starvation to
dishonor at the hand of these monsters."

Documents relative to the atrocities in Eastern Prussia, similar
to these, were set forth in a memorial of the German government
of March 25, 191 5. This document, composed of the testimonies
of eye-witnesses, included a large number of cases of rape, venereal
infection and similar incidents whose soundness cannot be tested
today. The value of the testimonies which, for the most part, were
provided by those who were supposed to have been raped is, as we
have shown, very dubious even in peace times, and much more so
during war.

The actual atrocities of the World War were, we repeat, not
these historical crimes of war but the ghastly murderous inventions
of technology. That is why we close this chapter with the words
in which Karl Krauss summarized his consideration of poison gas:
"Man does not make any single progress whatever without reveng-
ing himself for it."

Chapter 19

POST-WAR REVOLUTION AND SEXUALITY

Armistice Upsets Soldiers' Routine — Orgiastic Celebration of Peace —
Enormous Increase of Venereal Disease — Hinterland Girls Warned Against
Diseased Soldiers — Sexuality Rampant in Russia — German Officers as Don
Juans — Revolution and Counter -Revolution — Women as Sadist Leaders —
Pre-War and Post-War Russian Morality — A Blood-Thirsty Female Ter-
rorist— Rape and Mass Murder — Black Army of Occupation — "The Black
Plague" — Black and White Rape and Perversion — Peace Time Brothels
for Post-War Armies — The Burden of Erotic Heroism — Reparation Babies

THE bloody drama approached its end. The cannons became silent,
the mass-murders ceased after almost five years, and mankind
drew its breath. Man did not realize that, from this most frightful
war in human history, all lands and all peoples would come out
defeated, or that capitalism, which had conjured up this unspeak-
able misery, would suffer the greatest defeat. Capitalism still had
years of life in which again and again its supremacy over the
tortured earth would be challenged, and in which, here and there,
rebellious masses would demand an accounting for the blood shed.
More and more its power tottered and it had to muster its forces
to maintain power through the frequent crises, and the battlefields
of peace also strewn with corpses. On the body of this capitalism,
once so proud, there yawned a great red wound — the Russia of the
proletarian revolution.

It is impossible to obtain a true picture of the psychological
reactions of the period immediately after the close of the war. Even
that statement which is most creditable, that the end of the greatest
slaughter of all history was received everywhere with loud ex-
pressions of joy, was not the whole truth. The war had lasted too
long for this. Having seen what frightful brutalization ensued as a
result of the war, it should not surprise us to learn that the
Armistice was regarded by many as an interruption to a form of
life to which they had become accustomed. All soldiers, not only
those of the "so-called" victorious nations, can verify this. Thus
the English non-commissioned officer, Edmonds, wrote that the
most disappointing moment of the war was the announcement of
the Armistice as the war enchantment was suddenly dispelled, and
they were thrust back into an unfriendly world. Millions of men,
worked up to an unnatural pitch of excitement and daring, were
suddenly thrust back into routine normalcy which destroyed their

321

322 THE SEXUAL HISTORY OF THE WORLD WAR

equilibrium. To the soldier, fighting had become second nature.
He had grown accustomed to live in the moment and, though his
joys were extremely meager, they were seized upon with an in-
tensity unknown in civil life. When the Armistice came, ending
the whole adventure, men had to tear themselves out of this new
world and turn anew to a life which seemed distant and empty, a
life where one had to earn one's living. Now one had to "worry
for the morrow whereas, until now, one had grown dishabituated
even to expecting to be alive on the morrow. Disappointment came
with peace, and not with war; peace was a hopeless condition. In
war every activity was directed to a definite end. Peace did not
appear to lead to anything; it was an anti-climax."

This description, which does not come from the pen of a soldier
enthusiastic for war, could be duplicated by similar utterances by
German soldiers and serves as a supplement (and contribution as
well) to our remarks concerning the fact that war became second-
nature. What is symptomatic in these utterances is the inability of
the soldier to find his way back to peaceful work (which fre-
quently enough he had never known) after the five years which
were so advantageous to the development of infantalism and ata-
vism. This inability, as a result of which innumerable men were
ruined subsequently, together with the intoxication of love which
resulted when humanity was suddenly freed from a tremendous
pressure, stamped the after-war period with its peculiar morals.

The free erotic indulgence, resulting from the Armistice, was
found on all sides and was not difficult to explain. Remember that
the outbreak of the war was greeted as a prospective carnival for
the liberated primeval impulses which were to find triumphant
fulfillment. But this turned out to be a bitter disappointment, espe-
cially in the erotic realm. While the artificially aroused atavistic
impulses of cruelty could be gratified upon the battlefield, there
was no chance for a healthy sexual life. What is more, great masses
of the hinterland suffered as a result of the dearth of men and this
sexual need could not be controlled by any conventional repres-
sions. During all this time there was no trace of that erotic libera-
tion for which war had been so enthusiastically welcomed— except
at the halting-stations. Now that the Armistice had come and the
military enslavement of man had ceased, this liberation from
morality could become a fact.

In the hinterland orgiastic parties of celebration were held and
the soldiers of both armies obtained their love-pleasures on the way

POST-WAR REVOLUTION AND SEXUALITY 323

home — in the districts of Belgium, France and Germany now occu-
pied by the Allied troops. Everywhere the flames of sensual desire
blazed up, restrictions fell away, and the consequence was not
only a moral chaos but a marked increase in venereal diseases.
This is also a consequence of war. The Germans endeavored to
make the revolution responsible for this immorality, but unfor-
tunately for the German explanation, we find the same conditions
among the Allies. General Crozier remarked to his chief that the
men had become woman crazy, and that venereal diseases were
spreading. It was rumored at that time that, to honor the arrival of
the Allied troops, the Germans had released from prison all women
who had been there because of venereal diseases. For this reason
this British general counselled his superior officer to take measures
against the spread of syphilis and to instruct the men to care for
themselves to prevent bringing this plague to England.

Undoubtedly the erotic exhibitions of the first peace days were
psychologically comprehensible, a natural reaction against the en-
slavement and torture of life during the war. This erotic insanity
was not confined to the beaten nations, nor was it confined to any
particular group of the population. Moreover, the conditions for
the spreading of venereal diseases were the same on both sides.
Soon these diseases, confined during war behind the lines and at
the halting-stations, found their way to the hinterland. Even dur-
ing the war, these diseases were transplanted home through dis-
eased, wounded or furloughed men. They were helped along by
the promiscuity raging at home. For these reasons the "Dance of
the Gonococci" is a direct consequence of the war and cannot be
attributed to the revolutions in the Central states as some scientists
tried to do for counter-revolutionary reasons.

All the measures taken by the victorious and defeated armies for
the control of venereal diseases proved futile. At the end of Novem-
ber, 1918, Julian Marcuse wrote that venereal disease in the
German army was greater than indicated by official statistics, for
it was impossible that the figures should be the same as in peace
times considering the fact that Belgium, France, Russia and Rou-
mania were full of this pestilence, that war had increased clandes-
tine prostitution enormously and had made so many unemployed
women bearers of this infection. Marcuse's opinion was that the
efforts made by the German military authorities to cope with this
problem were themselves an index that the number of diseased was
greater than that indicated by the official statistics. Moreover, the

324 THE SEXUAL HISTORY OF THE WORLD WAR

counsel of workers and soldiers at Niirnberg issued a proclamation
immediately after the Armistice (a number of other cities followed) :
"Because of the war, the number of venereal diseases has increased
tremendously and an enormous number of diseased soldiers are
returning home from the front. As a result of rapid demobilization,
it is feared that the whole land will become infected with these
diseases bringing great suffering to the individual and to his whole
family. The female population is requested to avoid every intimate
relation with soldiers and it is the duty of mothers to enlighten
their young daughters and guard them closely."

As far as the historian of morals is concerned, perhaps the most
important aspect of the revolution is the role which women played
in paving the way for them and in actual participation. This has
been treated from the view of the criminologists by Wulffen in his
notable work, Woman as Sexual Criminal, from which we quote
the following remarks: "Mass-crimes illustrate that frequently the
charm exerted by a woman drives a man to commit crimes in her
behalf. Schneickert has observed, in strike riots and disturbances of
other kinds, that often enterprising blades are heartened by the
presence of their 'brides' to do all sorts of mischief. What happens
here, in a small degree, takes place in a revolution on a large scale.

.'in the food-riots brought on by war and inflation, one could
frequently see the effect exercised upon the waiting masses of
people by certain women."

It can scarcely be doubted that the revolutions of the Central
states were heralded by the excited mood of the women who stood
in long lines at food stations waiting for their little mites. But still
more important was the fact that, even before the end of the war,
there had been two revolutions— the Irish and the Russian— in
which women participated in a way unknown before. It had long
been recognized that woman was amenable to violent social trans-
formations, frequently for the reason that these are connected with
violent explosions of passion and the breakdown of those repres-
sions which are hallowed by society. These eruptions and social
changes she can use for her erotic pleasure. In addition, instincts of
cruelty were also concerned. Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld has related
that, during the days of the Spartacus uprisings in Berlin, the
corpses of those that had fallen during the melees were spread out
in the morgue naked. All day well-dressed women would come to
view these corpses for erotic titillation. Similar cases were known
in the Russian civil war and, indeed, this is no novelty in the history

POST-WAR REVOLUTION AND SEXUALITY 325

of revolution. But what is an unmistakable expression of the eman-
cipation of woman, which, as we have seen, was tremendously
accelerated by the war, was the participation of women in the Irish
and Russian revolutions. Now they appear, for the most part, not
as sexual creatures who are concerned with snatching erotic
pleasure, nor enemies of the revolution, but as conscious fellow
warriors. For the first time woman, who had achieved equal right,
gave the world to understand that she was determined to play an
important role in the political history of mankind, that hereafter
she would not be satisfied with the indirect influence upon his-
torical events through man.

In the Irish revolution, which arose both from nationalistic and
anti-war motives and blazed from April 16 to May 1, 1916,
transferring the center of Dublin into a heap of ruins, women
played a decisive role. We might mention here with special honor
the "Red Countess" Markiewicz, Mrs. Despard, a sister of Field
Marshal French, and the "green lady," Mary Gonne.

In the Russian revolution we meet women at all posts. Consider-
ing the importance which the Russian revolution has from the
point of view of the new sex morality that has arisen there, we
wish to treat of these conditions in more detail. As far as the war
years are concerned, essentially the same results were produced
there as in western Europe. Here, too, sex life stood in the shadow
of great hunger during the years of the catastrophe, only here the
greater freedom of the Russians in matters of sexuality, produced a
difference. The love life of the Russians during the war is similar
to that of West Europeans, but more honest and more funda-
mental. Read, for example, what the domestic Arina, in a novel of
Babel, says to her lover, the father of her child, as he takes leave of
her en route to the battlefront: "There is no point, Serjoschka, in
waiting for you. In four years I shall be delivered three times, more
or less. I shall get a room and raise my skirt and whoever comes
will be the master, whether he is a Jew or someone worse. Before
you come back I shall be a tired and worn-out female. . . ."

It will not surprise us, therefore, that love for prisoners-of-war
was widespread in Russia. In the famous novel, Wirinea, by the
most original living woman writer of Russia, Sejfullina, the wife
of a soldier, states unequivocally that she sees no reason why she
should not be free in her conduct. She is the wife of a soldier and
after she has taken care of her children (and after God has taken
care of her in-laws by calling them to himself and thus relieving

326 THE SEXUAL HISTORY OF THE WORLD WAR

her of the burden) there is no reason why she should not take her
joy with a neat prisoner-of-war who works for her. Another woman,
a peasant who lives in the Siberian village, complains that all the
men have been drafted and that the only ones left are either senile,
invalid or young adolescents. Occasionally some railroad engineers
would come. As to the Austrian prisoners, this healthy peasant
complained that they were sickly and mentioned enviously that
other villages had splendid prisoners.

Prisoners-of-war in Russia had considerable freedom even before
the revolution and as a result of working the land together prisoners-
of-war and soldiers' wives often had liaisons. At the beginning most
of these alliances were "wild," but later on many were legally
married. A popular song, poking fun at these loves, was sung by
the street gamins of Siberian villages at that time, which inquired
how Sascha, Mascha and Natascha, all Serbian girls, managed to
marry Hungarians.

Sejfullina has drawn for us a picture of the general ethical con-
ditions of that time: "In general the women whose men were away
became man-crazy. The girls couldn't find any bridegrooms but
they were of an age when the flesh demanded its rights. The men
who were connected with the railroad in various capacities, tried
to lure them by promises of special pleasures and gifts, and so the
peasant woman exchanged her clothing for the short skirts of the
city and put away her conscience. She made free with strange
men. The engineers employed on the railroad went to doctors to
be cured of their venereal infections, but the peasants had no time
to waste on such matters, as long as they did not become bed-
ridden. The practice of farming did not permit them to leave their
plows and go to the hospital but many of these peasants became
diseased. Infected soldiers frequently came from the city and so
the peasant population decayed because of the war and the con-
struction of the railroad."

The army saw a great spread of venereal diseases and these
conditions became worse in the first period of the revolution. The
uprising, the civil war, and the resulting chaos produced the most
remarkable changes in the realm of sex. In various portions of
Russia, one army of occupation succeeded another and because of
the indescribable economic misery there ensued erotic chaos. In
the borderlands, armies had been stationed before the war and
some had entered at the time of the civil war. There were Germans
in the west, English and French troops in the south, Japanese in

POST-WAR REVOLUTION AND SEXUALITY 327

the east, and everywhere revolutionary and counter-revolutionary
groups, both regular and guerrila, who tore through the land,
plundering and seizing everything that they needed — including the
women of the starved population. The latter supported themselves
at that time, as appears from the novel of Russian reconstruction,
titled Cement, by washing the linen of officers and receiving soldiers
at night. That which the proletarian and peasant woman did out of
hunger and misery, the women of the better class did because of
their love hunger and because of the decay of the social order.
The Don Juan life of the officers of the German army of occupa-
tion in the Ukraine and Western Russia has been described in a
novel by Vladimir Lidin who drew a picture of the festivities and
the amorous escapades that were carried on in distinguished
Russian households with German officers.

The same conditions were true, in the horrible period of 1918,
of the officers of the Allied troops and the military missions in
Siberia (when Red Russia became a ball in the hands of Red and
White powers). English and American soldiers, sturdy and well-
nourished, lounged around the train depots in the East, spitting
tobacco juice, observing with disgust the Russian formations which
Koltschak had raised and equipped with machine guns, and ren-
dered pliable by drill that nearly wore the poor troops to death. In
the city, French officers bought women and butter (which became
continually scarcer).

The participation of woman in the revolutionary struggles was
quite natural in a land where, even earlier, woman had enjoyed a
certain degree of equality with man, who had worked on the land
side by side with man, who for many decades in the cities had
participated in preparing for the revolution, a preparation littered
with human sacrifices, and who during the war, took a far greater
part in the fighting than the women of other nations. Thousands
of Russian women fought by the side of men in the various fronts
against the counter-revolution, making sacrifices of even their life
for the maintenance of Soviet power.

Legends were built around the bravery of the Russian proletarian
woman soldier. In the novel of Dorochow, Golgotha, the action of
which takes place during the Siberian civil war, we read the
following:

"In the western division, Vera Gnewenko participated in the
fighting, bearing her firearms in one hand and carrying over the
opposite shoulder a bag containing bandages and medicine. She

328 THE SEXUAL HISTORY OF THE WORLD WAR

took an active part in a battle which lasted five days and nights.
She applied the bandages to the soldiers on the open field as care-
fully and lovingly as though every soldier were her own son. She
felt neither fatigue, hunger nor fright.

" 'Comrade Vera, you should rest a little while.'

"She didn't even look at one but only nodded her head and
said, 'There's no time for that now.'

"Vera had a wonderful voice. Like an electric current her words
ran through the ranks: 'Up for the last battle.'

"The red flag in Vera's hand fluttered. Its soft folds draped
themselves around her small, slim body. Enthusiasm gripped the
heart as the charming voice of the girl called out: 'The Interna-
tional is fighting for human rights! Hurrah!' "

In the civil wars, also, the sexual hunger of the soldiers played
the same role as in regular warfare. Thus in the novel, The Child
by Wsewolod Ivanov, we read of a battalion of a red army which
was fighting in Mongolia:

"They suffered from boredom. As long as they were harassed by
the Whites in the mountains, the vast dark hills filled their hearts
with terror, but on the steppes their spirits were laid waste by
ennui and yearning. And then it was difficult to get along without
women. During the nights, the soldiers would tell one another
highly-spiced stories concerning females, and when they were unable
to bear it any longer they saddled their horses and captured some
Kirghiz women. As soon as the latter would see the Russians they
would lie down on their backs and surrender. It was ugly to take
them in this way as they lay there, immobile, with eyes tightly
shut; it was as though one was sinning with animals."

In another story by the same author we read of a certain white
woman who was captured by a troop of sex-hungry Tartar Red
Guards stationed in Siberia. She was condemned to be shot but
before she was executed the men that were watching over her de-
cided to rape her. She put up a brave fight and defended herself
valiantly with a knife. Whereupon one of the guards said to the
fellows that they must restrain themselves and hold fast even as
the revolution was holding on fast.

Of course it is impossible to say whether the last admonition just
cited was characteristic of the whole Red army but we certainly do
know that the Whites were immeasurably worse. In the novel of
Dorochow already quoted, we read how the Whites behaved in the
districts in Siberia that they occupied:

POST-WAR REVOLUTION AND SEXUALITY 329

"The snotty moustache of the first lieutenant danced. Sparks
dithered in his grey eyes. A cold wave shot through his body.
'Bring the women here, all of them!'

"Like a pack of hungry animals, the soldiers and Hussars hurled
themselves upon the women and girls. With frightful screams, the
latter sought to escape the foul and brutal embraces of the hands
that clutched at them. Before they were thrown to the ground,
trembling hands glided over their breasts and the lusty animals
hurled themselves upon the naked bodies with passionate move-
ments. The eyes were blood red and the heads whirling. A bestial
din filled the whole place."

Even those peasants with counter-revolutionary sympathies were
afraid of the brutalities of the Whites. Concerning one White troop
led by Karasjuk, Panferow has told us the following: "When they
first came the peasants welcomed them with the Cross and with
bread, but when they heard reports of their approach in the village
the second time, the peasants hid their cattle and women and
when they appeared the third time the peasants met the Karasjuk
fellows with weapons in their hands and either hurled them into the
river or let them lie dead on the streets."

The atrocities and brutalities of the civil war had no parallel in
the history of the world. Father and son fought passionately against
each other, and, if we are to believe the literary documents con-
cerning this bloody period, it was not at all rare for father and
son to murder each other. Among the tortures which were invented
at that time, many can scarcely conceal the vicious sadism which
is combined with an almost incredibly degenerate hatred. In the
invention of new methods of execution, the Cossacks excelled as
they had been systematically educated for this by Czarism, and
also by those foreigners who fought in the armies in the civil war.
In the Russian novel of Doderer we come upon the following
significant description:

"The legion of the southern Slavs, comprised primarily of Serbs,
was not large in numbers but unexcelled in bestiality; it came
upon the idea of executing captured Bolsheviki by degrees, so to
speak. The unfortunate Reds were led to the execution block at the
edge of the city of Semipalatinsk in Western Siberia. Here their
executioners chopped off one of their limbs and then returned in
two hours to lop off another and so on, thus prolonging the death
agony. . . . But after the capture of Semipalatinsk, a large number
of these Serbians fell into the hands of Russian troops and the

33o THE SEXUAL HISTORY OF THE WORLD WAR

torturers were treated to a dose of their own medicine. The leader
of the Czech legions, Gajda, became notorious toward the summer
of 1 9 19 for his mass execution of troops; but he was not alone
in this, for even earlier, on October 8, 19 18, just before the fourth
Serbian army captured Samara, the Russian general, Lupow, exe-
cuted nine hundred Russian recruits who didn't want to accompany
the army when the Whites had to leave the city."

In an essay that became widely known a few years ago, Gorki
listed a whole series of executions of this sort. He emphasized that
they were carried out by Reds and Whites alike, each imitating the
other. These executions were virtually sadistic play with murders.
A popular gruesome murder was to rip open the belly, tear out a
portion of the intestine and nail it to a tree. Thereupon the agonized
sufferer was compelled to run around the tree until all his guts
were wound around it. Another popular game was the "promotion
to general." On the side where generals usually wear their distinc-
tions, the skin of the captured was ripped off the body as well as
pieces from the shoulder. In general all the atrocities of the Thirty
Years' War were revived, including tying the prisoner to the tail
of horses, quartering, breaking on the wheel, flaying, etc. Me-
mentoes of these horrible practices can be found even today at the
Central Museum of the Red Army of Moscow. Concerning the
collection of this museum which is undoubtedly unique, Stefan
Mill has made the following statement in an essay:

"Among the mementoes of the regime of the White Guardists is
a glove of human skin torn off from the hand of a Red Guardist in
the Ural district. The dried skin is wrinkled and the fingernails
appear polished. Frightful! But there are even more frightful things
here: the hook of the gallows in Pleskau which Bulak-Balachowitsch
used to hang one hundred people at one operation— a plain rusty
iron hook."

Of course the traditional Russian knout was not permitted to
rest at this time either; and anyone who is acquainted with the
Czaristic administration of the nagaika knows what sort of flog-
gings were administered. _ _

Interestingly enough, women frequently took part in these sadistic
orgies. So, for example, we read that in the Far East the Whites
held military courts at which strumpets were spectators and where
the torturers would intermit the business of the court with billiard
games. The Austrian prisoner-of-war, Dr. Burghard Breitner, wrote
in his diary under December 1, 1919, a description of a scene in

POST-WAR REVOLUTION AND SEXUALITY 331

the notorious armored car of the ataman, Semenoff, a Cossack
chieftain, whose sadism was unparalleled. Some guests were in-
vited into this armored car in which seventeen chained criminals
were being done to death. Roundabout there stood a group of
Russian officers and quite a few Russian women who observed
with interest and satisfaction how the unfortunates were being
beaten upon their bare bodies and genitals with iron rods. This
torture took about twelve minutes and then death would mercifully
come. Thereupon the ladies would all applaud. I inquired of one
of the Japanese visitors who had witnessed this horror what he
proposed to do when he returned to the Japanese staff at Chita.
He replied "that he intended to do nothing because the Japanese
did not mix in the internal affairs of Russia." (Incidentally, this
scene took place at Chita which was guarded by the Japanese
troops of occupation and was the chief city of the area controlled
by Semenoff.)

Similar reports are extant concerning the Red terror but these
must be accepted with a great deal of caution as they were fre-
quently used for political propaganda. At any rate, let us cite two
such cases from a work of Dr. Johannes Berlinger, concerning the
sadism of women:

"In the year 1920 there was active, at Novo-Nikolajewsk, a
young woman who had a very specialized way of executing her
victims. The latter had to bare their upper bodies and kneel, where-
upon this specialist would shoot right into their carotid artery."

"The most notorious of the many women connected with the
Cheka of Kiev was one named Olga, a drug fiend, who took a
peculiar delight in shooting naked prisoners in their cells, or burn-
ing out their eyes with her cigarettes."

Another example of these sadistic atrocity reports which arose
again and again in a Europe that was so hostile to the Bolsheviki
but which were more characteristic of those who propagated them
than the actual conditions in Russia, we shall now cite on the
authority of Krasnow:

"A certain female Chekist, who worked in the Cheka of Odessa,
used to shoot the sentenced men herself and this was the peculiar
procedure that she employed: She sat down upon a chair and
spread her legs wide apart. Behind her was placed the completely
naked counter-revolutionary who was then compelled to crawl
underneath her chair and come out between her legs. As soon as

332 THE SEXUAL HISTORY OF THE WORLD WAR

the head of the prisoner came into view she shot him in the
temple."

During the civil war the bourgeois order in Russia fell into ruins.
Only when the revolution had emerged triumphant from all its
trials, could any thought be taken of substituting not only a new
system of production for the capitalist economy but also a substi-
tute for bourgeois morality for the Russian proletariat.

We can be fairly brief as far as the revolutions in the Central
states are concerned. Apart from Russia, no other country saw a
lasting transformation of the economic and social structures of
society and no comprehensive alteration of moral concepts. That
destruction, overthrow and revolution, coincided in point of time
with the blazing up of the desire for erotic pleasure already alluded
to, must not lead us to a misuse of the categories of cause and
effect. The intoxication of the senses was a valid international reac-
tion to the limitations of war which were put upon all as a duty
to the community with the exception of a small group who ex-
ploited the world conflagration at the hinterland and at the halt-
stations. Revolution and erotic overindulgence are parallel reac-
tions which must not be brought into a causal connection. A new
sexual morality arises where the fundamental conditions of life in
society have changed. This was not the case anywhere except
Russia. For this reason the generation of the World War in Central
and Western Europe was prevented from experiencing the growth
of a revolutionary eroticism.

This does not mean that even in the revolutions of Central
Europe there were not cases where erotic forces were effective,^ but
this is much more true of counter-revolutions than of revolutions.
The former were absolutely merciless and revenged every on-
slaught with a bloodthirsty cruelty which afforded a deep insight
into the sadistically colored psyche of that time. The blood-drenched
way of counter-revolution led over the Russia of the civil war,
through the White terror in Finland, which was protected by Ger-
man bayonets, to the pogrom rule of Petlura in the Ukraine so rich
in rapes (incidentally, this Petlura, like Talaat Pascha, was assas-
sinated a few years later in Paris), and into the West of Europe.
In Germany the troops of peace saw to it that the spirit of militar-
ism, which was thought to be dead, was transplanted to the coming
generation. The militia and the volunteer corps carried on the tradi-
tion of the halting-station of the World War and produced a genera-
tion of youth which has given to the world its ample yield of

POST-WAR REVOLUTION AND SEXUALITY 333

murder. Ernst Ottwaltt wrote a novel called Law and Order in
which he documented the Sittengesitche of this nationalistic youth.
At the end of the novel he has the hero, who is largely the incorpo-
ration of the author's own experience and ideas, say the following:
"We drank, played cards and earned much money. And many times
we also shot at the workers."

In two lands of the former Central powers the ultimate conse-
quences of the revolution were drawn: in Hungary and Bavaria,
which, partly with and partly without the co-operation of the
Communists, introduced the Communist political form of Soviet
republics. Both lived only a short while, and were drowned in a
sea of blood and neither succeeded, as did Russia, in creating a new
form of sexual morality. Just a word about the role of women in
the Soviet Republic of Munich. In an essay devoted to this ques-
tion we read the following:

"The erotic life of the individual leaders had its special note. As
with all leading men the observation could be made that a small
group of women was continually occupied with them. These women
either were captivated by the success or fame of these leaders or
they sought to gratify their own vanity. The women and girls
clung to their lovers with deepest devotion, shared misery and
danger with them in the most remarkable way. Of course, in other
cases, it was enthusiasm for the revolution which drove the women
into the arms of these leaders."

In Hungary, where the Soviet republic managed to survive 133
days, attempts were actually made to create a new sexual code
according to the Russian model. Thus the "wild marriages" were
put on the same level with civil marriages; the difference between
legitimate and illegitimate children was abolished, and marriage
and divorce made easier. But this transformation did not go beyond
some superficial alterations in the relations of the sexes, particu-
larly in the conduct of women, and since no new class had come
to power the change affected the bourgeois strata principally. Hence
the revolution really helped them throw off a little the shackles of
bourgeois morality. A very typical case is that of the distin-
guished Budapest woman who pursued a member of the govern-
ment counsel and did not rest until she had won him over by her
courting. Here the revolution of the proletariat exercised the pro-
foundest effect on the women of the bourgeoisie which the latter
used mostly for her own sexual liberation, inasmuch as the prole-
tariat had no time to formulate its demands in the realm of sex

334 THE SEXUAL HISTORY OF THE WORLD WAR

ethics, much less to realize them in the life of the community.
In his novel of the Hungarian revolution Bella Hies depicts, with
a great deal of fidelity, how a bourgeois woman seeks to seduce a
young Communist:

"My husband has fled to the enemy and cannot return because
he is an enemy of the proletarian dictatorship. I am remaining here
and I have no notion of leaving because, despite my class position,
I am fundamentally a Socialist. And now I must mention another
fact— that I am only thirty years old and am remaining here with-
out a husband. Now what is my duty? Must I follow the old
bourgeois morality and remain true to my husband? Or am I
entitled to the love of another man without having terminated
my marriage; or must I first dissolve my marriage?"

After the overthrow of the Hungarian Soviet republic (and also
the Bavarian), attempts were made to accuse the leaders of the
proletarian movements of various sexual aberrations and, following
out an apparently ineradicable historical necessity, to discover in
those women who had participated in the revolution, females who
had been transformed into hyenas. The chief of the Red terror,
Szamuely, who had been in charge of suppressing counter-revolu-
tionary movements, was said to be a sadist. As a matter of fact, he
seems to have suffered from an inferiority complex which he ac-
quired during his Russian imprisonment. He had gone through the
school of the Russian revolution and, although he did pronounce
sentences of death, he was not personally present at these execu-
tions, which makes it unlikely that he had a sadistic Veranlangung.

Eu'gen Szatmary has left us the following data concerning female
terrorists which have been contradicted by authorities on the
subject:

"Many of these women were criminals. Of course there were
intelligent women among them whose participation in the atroci-
ties belongs to the realm of psychopathia sexualis. Thus one of
the most blood-thirsty terrorists was a young woman physician,
Dr. Hona Telek. Her husband, a certain Pecskay, was the com-
mandant of a detachment of terrorists working in the province.
As the counter-revolution flared up here and there, this detach-
ment went to Kiskoros where numerous counter-revolutionaries
were hanged. Mrs. Pecskay was present at all the executions, carry-
ing many of them out herself and insisting that she be permitted to
establish the death of the executed."

After the overthrow of the Hungarian dictatorship in Hungary,

POST-WAR REVOLUTION AND SEXUALITY

335

numerous anecdotes of a similar sort were manufactured and cir-
culated, but they are all without credibility. Very likely the same
sort of thing is true of a portion of the atrocities perpetrated by
the detachments of officers acting as judges and executors in their
own right who, after the liquidation of the Soviet system, made
Hungary such an unsafe place with their employment of Rouman-
ian weapons. But there is no doubt of the fact that they carried
out mass-murders on actual or suspected Communists; and the
extreme bestiality of their conduct to these prisoners has been
established incontrovertibly. Thus we need only point to the report
of the delegation, under the leadership of Captain Wedgwood, sent
to Hungary by the British Labor Party to investigate the case of
Mrs. Hamburger who was captured by a detachment of officers
and dragged to a dungeon. It was a sadistic orgy, pure and simple.
The report summarized the case thus:

"Three officers, with whips in hand, flogged Mrs. Hamburger
cruelly and commanded her to undress. She hesitated; whereupon
she was whipped again and again until she consented and disrobed.
Naked, she was again beaten ; then the command was given to bring
in another prisoner who had been arrested at the same time with
her but who was no relative of hers. When Bela Neumann was
brought in he was ordered to violate Mrs. Hamburger, but he
refused on the ground that he was an old friend of hers and her
husband's. They beat him mercilessly but he still refused. There-
upon two officers, whose names are unknown, took pincers and
tore his teeth out. He fell into a faint but they revived him by
pouring cold water over him; when he came to they compelled
him to lick up his own blood. Mrs. Hamburger fainted two or
three times during the ordeal but they revived her by pouring cold
water over her. (Mrs. Hamburger denied that any of the monsters
that were torturing them were intoxicated.) Finally Neumann was
castrated with a penknife in her presence and then carried away.
Now they brought in another man whom they undressed. When
he was naked, Mrs. Hamburger observed that he had been man-
handled and that one of his sex organs had been crushed. He too
was ordered to ravish Mrs. Hamburger and, despite the fact that
he was physically unable to do so, the officers compelled him to
make attempts. Then they ordered Mrs. Hamburger, naked as she
was, to sit on the hot stove, but she wailed so piteously that they
didn't insist upon this. She had not yet recovered from her men-
struation but, nevertheless, the officers tore her legs apart and the

336 THE SEXUAL HISTORY OF THE WORLD WAR

one who had castrated Neumann thrust the handle of his whip into
her vagina and turned it so forcibly that she still suffers hemor-
rhages on that account."

We shall not continue this discussion of atrocities any further.
Mass-murders, such as those that occurred in the Orgovany Woods,
lead us to conclude that these murders were all preceded by rape.
The characters of the criminals engaged in these exploits appear to
be similar to that of Lieutenant Lederer who was condemned to
the rope and executed because he had murdered someone in Buda-
pest for unpolitical reasons. This malefactor was a typical partici-
pant in the counter-revolutionary terror. When this terror was at
its maddest, the lyricist, Ludwig Kassak, himself a product of the
proletariat, wrote a poem to the Hungarian workers containing the
following tragically true words: "Wretches, inflamed with White
madness, sought to extinguish the red sun with their body's blood."

To the history of the revolutionary period following the World
War, and undoubtedly also to the Sittengeschichte of the latter,
which found a continuation in peace times in more than one re-
spect, there belongs the question of German occupation of terri-
tory. For a while French and Belgian troops of occupation took
pains to repay the brutalities of the German occupation during the
World War, and they did a thorough job. In the midst of peace the
civilized world was treated to a spectacle which constituted a
reprisal of the worst effects of the war. The brothels for officers
and soldiers of accursed memory were resuscitated. In the Rhine
district, occupied by the French, nineteen brothels were erected
in sixteen places, including Ludwigshafen, Trieres, Weisbaden and
Ems, of which thirteen were still extant on September 30, 1922.
The costs of these enterprises, as well as of the occupation in gen-
eral, had to be paid by the Reich or by the communities. Hence
it will not surprise us to learn that these brothels were luxuriously
equipped. In an official compilation of the furniture needs of the
army of occupation, of the period between the autumn of 1920
and the summer of 1922, there figure suspicious numbers of such
items as 800 women's writing tables, 500 dresses, 200 bidets, 3500
children's beds, 36,000 coffee cups, 58,000 liquor glasses, 450,000
bedsheets and 680,000 meters of material for bedsheets, which
would suffice to reach all the way from London to Naples. In
Landau a four-family house was emptied of its occupants and
turned into a brothel.

As a result, this brothel-prostitution, organized in military fashion

POST-WAR REVOLUTION AND SEXUALITY

337

in the occupied areas of Germany, had the same consequences as
the typical forms of war eroticism with the long lines of men
waiting before the doors, aggravated here by the fact that most of
the soldiers were colored. In these houses each girl was required
to receive ten men in three hours. The American journalist, Villard,
wrote in The Nation:

"I visited many of these terrible places in two different cities
and I know that I shall never forget the impressions made upon
me by them. The first was a new building erected by the hard-
pressed city administration, right near the graves of the German,
French and Russian soldiers who had died in that city of wounds.
There were fifteen German girls in this brothel. While I was there
more than sixty colored men were waiting outside for their turn.
It sounds incredible that during their work day these German girls
received daily between sixty and one hundred customers — a bes-
tiality quite apart from the color of their clients."

It may be that this American writer was somewhat mistaken
about the number of men these girls had to receive, but it is true
that these unfortunate girls worked on the speed-up and stretch-
out system. In Miinchen-Gladbach the two women, who consti-
tuted the personnel of the public house there, asserted that they
were not sufficient to satisfy the demands of the large number of
men present there; since the city was unwilling to supply funds to
increase the personnel, the French commanding general assigned
one battalion of each of the regiments under his control to each of
the six working days in the week. He also had cards of admission
printed, and assigned to each of the two women ten men daily
which made one hundred and twenty during the week. Although
medical control had been instituted everywhere, this brothelized
prostitution, controlled by the military, was in this case a breeding
ground for venereal diseases. The number of diseased increased
tremendously, even in the civilian population, as a result of causes
which are intimately connected with every military occupation.
In babies, also, there was noticed an increase in congenital syphilis.
In 1920 the venereal ward of the Municipal Hospital at Ludwigs-
hafen was so crowded that the tuberculosis division had to be
turned over for the use of venereal patients. Thus it could be noted
in peace times, also, that there can be no occupation and no military
prostitution without resulting venereal infection of large groups
of the population. It is to be noted that this increase of venereal
diseases took place in sparsely settled districts of Germany and in

338 THE SEXUAL HISTORY OF THE WORLD WAR

other warring lands, but not to the same degree. The Black Plague
propaganda made the colored troops of occupation responsible for
this condition. Clarte really underestimated matters when he wrote
as follows:

"Whenever black troops have encamped, syphilis has taken a
dreadful toll. Moreover, many prostitutes harboring serious vene-
real infections have been sent to Wiesbaden and Mayence. The
hospitals are no longer able to contain them all, and so large houses
have been reserved for these sick men and women. Among patients
who have been transferred to these hospitals are German girls who
are not yet of marriageable age, some of them not older than
fourteen or fifteen."

The leaders of the army of occupation fought against prostitu-
tion with the same weapons that the Germans had used during the
war in Belgium and northern France: control by the sanitary police,
compulsory treatment in case of infection and deportation to unoc-
cupied territory (in case of a French woman, to France). It is
scarcely necessary to add that, as a result of the great economic
depression of the population in all the towns which harbored troops
of occupation, all these maneuvers and devices were unable to
eradicate the ever-increasing pestilence of clandestine prostitution.

The great indignation felt at the presence of black troops in the
Rhine district resulted in the propaganda of the Black Plague,
which was based on fairly frequent atrocities at the beginning of
occupation but which later on became even worse. No one can
deny the predilection of the black race for white and, especially,
blond women, but in addition to female race fetishish entertained
by the women, and to an even greater degree, material misery led
to relationships between the colored soldiers of occupation and the
women of the civil population. To be sure, women whose past was
more than a little shady, but who were now penitent, desired to
create the belief that in all these cases one was dealing with rape.
But here, as in the war in general and indeed in the criminal prac-
tice of peace times, all testimonies on this subject must be regarded
with great caution, especially when they are expressed by preg-
nant women who desire in this way to justify their error, or by
unsatisfied women with erotic imaginations. It is not difficult to
detect the erotic undertone in an utterance like the following which
came from the lips of a woman in the occupied Rhine district:
"These great, powerful men from the hot climates walk about
here, singly or in pairs, armed to the teeth, waiting for an oppor-

POST-WAR REVOLUTION AND SEXUALITY 339

tunity to satisfy their passion. Woe to the girl who is working in
the field or returning to the village from work, or who is on the
way to the city with the products of the farm! Dark shadows jump
out of the bushes or appear unexpectedly from the thick forests,
leap out from the cornfield, where they have lain hidden, then a
desperate attempt at flight which frequently is of no avail."

Women who write this way take delight in depicting such acts
of rape and are not at all averse to being raped in their dreams. Of
course no one wishes to deny that there were actual cases of rape,
sometimes followed by murder. But rape was not always com-
mitted by black men. Thus in a report issued by the head of the
government of Munster in February, 1923, we read the following
case:

"The unemployed J.X. was going with her bridegroom to their
new residence in Essen-Dellwig to bring a cart of furniture there.
At the canal bridge, both of them were halted and the bridegroom
was required to show his pass, which he did. Among the six French
soldiers, there was one Belgian who spoke German perfectly. One
of the French soldiers held a pistol to the head of the bridegroom,
Y., and compelled him to turn back home with his furniture. The
soldiers departed, taking X. along with them. After they had walked
a few paces they called out, 'Halt!' and placed their weapons at
her breasts. The Belgian then explained to her that if she would
satisfy them, nothing would happen to her, but otherwise she would
be shot. She had no sooner answered, 'No,' to this proposal when
she was thrown into a ditch by the French soldiers. Her hands were
tied behind her back, the Belgian placed his pistol at her breast,
and a French soldier violated her. During this, the other five soldiers
stood a few paces behind and laughed. After the first one was
finished the other five ravished her also."

To cite one case of murder preceded by rape, we will mention
that which took place in Idstein on June 12, 1922, the victim of
which, the nineteen-year-old Frieda Guckes, was first violated by
two Moroccans and then trampled to death. The murderers had
torn both her breasts with their teeth. They were young recruits
recently arrived from their African home to the army of occupa-
tion. Moreover, the colored men were accused of violating young
boys and the Rheinische Frauenliga listed quite a number of such
crimes. Dr. Stehle of Euskirchen stated that the usual procedure
was the following: "Towards evening the soldiers would call boys
whom they met on the streets, promise them sweets and money

340 THE SEXUAL HISTORY OF THE WORLD WAR

and then lead those that proved to be willing to some out-of-the-
way place where they would have their will of them, while one
soldier kept a watch. The presents of the soldiers, which occasion-
ally consisted of a piece of chocolate but more often of cash up
to fifty marks, were then spent on sweets and gobbled up. Of more
than a dozen youths, it is known that they carried on this way over
a period of months."

Finally, we must not overlook the fact that very frequently rela-
tions were entered into voluntarily between the soldiers of the
army of occupation and the women of the territory in question.
Those cases in which pregnancies resulted lead us to suppose that
we are dealing rather with voluntary surrender than with rape. At
any rate, after the first year of occupation, there was an enormous
increase in illegitimate births. In Cologne, between October i,
1919 and September 30, 1920, 2322 such births were registered. Of
the mothers, 809 were scarcely more than children, and the fathers
were nearly always soldiers of the army of occupation, colored as
well as white. The increase in the number of children of mixed
breed was especially obvious. The Englishman, Bagley, had this
to say in the Sunday Times:

"In the children's hospital one often sees in the rows of snowy
white children's beds, little black faces, half German and half
Negro, touching testimonies of the terror of this shameful thing
on the Rhine."

Very tender alliances were entered into between Englishmen
(and occasionally Americans) and German women. Concerning
such conditions in the city of Coblentz, we read the following in
B runner's illustrated History of Morals:

"The fact that the Americans had considerable money, drew a
great many 'dollar dolls' and 'Valuta' girls to them, not only from
the Rhine district, but even from remote parts of Germany. The
American military authorities were extremely rigid in their meth-
ods of controlling the sexual relations of their soldiers. Every
women seen in a pleasure resort or upon the street in the evening
in the company of an American soldier, who could not prove that
she was his wife or betrothed — merely to say that this was a steady
relationship was not sufficient— was liable to be arrested by the
military police and subjected to medical examination."

Naturally the period of inflation favored this development
greatly. Ever soldier of occupation was now a Croesus. But, in
addition, the longer the occupation lasted the less possible was it

POST-WAR REVOLUTION AND SEXUALITY 341

to maintain the original standpoint, which, on the German side,
had branded every contact with Allied soldiers as unpatriotic, and
on the side of the Allies, had prohibited every contact with the
civil population. Thousands of former enemies now married Ger-
man wives. Numbers of Frenchmen especially, had their relation-
ship with German women legalized, whereas the Englishman pre-
ferred to escape obligation and, in case of necessity, were often
able to have their sympathetic officers transfer them from the
district.

In December, 1929, the press reported that the Rhine League of
Women had applied to the proper authorites of Paris and London
to obtain support for the 15,000 illegitimate children which had
been left after the departure of the French and the English. Of the
15,000 about 8,000 had been fathered by British troops. The cause
of this remarkable relationship — the English were the smallest in
numbers in the army of occupation — is undoubtedly due to the
stability of the English pound. Whereas the French and the Bel-
gians were going through an inflation, the Tommies always had
money enough to spare. Since this support is for the most part
unobtainable and will very likely remain so, the erotic heroism of
the armies of occupation have foisted a burden of one hundred and
fifty million marks on the community of the Rhine. Let us hope,
at least, that the forsaken mothers of the Rhineland which has only
recently been evacuated as a token of the increasing fraternaliza-
tion of the nations, are the last sacrifices consumed by the "great
moral bath of steel."

SUNDAY NEWS, MAY 11.

Reprinted with permission of New York Daily News

U. S. Starts Cleanup
Of Camp Followers

By JOHN FREUND

WASHINGTON, D. C, May 10— Since man first went to war,
the prostitute has followed and exploited the warrior. But
now, as in 19 17, the Government is taking drastic measures to
combat the camp follower.

The House has passed a bill making prostitution within a "rea-
sonable distance" of military posts a federal offense, punishable
by a year's imprisonment, a $1,000 fine, or both. The Secretaries
of War and the Navy will determine the reasonable distance and
the FBI will enforce the law when and if the Senate passes it.
It is now in Senate committee.

Thus the Government hopes to wipe out the "chippy wagon" and
the "juke joint," excresences that have fixed themselves on the
fringes of the nation's military establishments, and to limit the vice
that has crept into the towns and cities to which soldiers and

sailors have access.

For the most part, prostitution in#>-
the vicinity of army camps has fol-
lowed the general pattern of the
neighborhood before the defense pro-
gram got under way — that is, local
facilities for illicit entertainment have
been enlarged.

Opportunists in the field, however,
have introduced some novelties, if
anything along those lines can be
called a novelty.

Fort Bragg Camp
9 Miles from Town.

The men at Fort Bragg, N. C, for
example, go into Fayetteville for
amusement. But the camp is nine
miles from town, and along the road
several places have been set up to
divert some of the town-bound busi-
ness. Among them is a rather smart

342

trap, operated by a man with an
imposing criminal record. High stakes
gambling tables are the big attraction
here. This spot entices officers chiefly.

Scattered along the route are some
juke joints, where the girls serving
food and drinks may be just hostesses
or may have a sideline. Also working
the highway are mobile brothels— a
girl or two in a nice car, offering lifts
to soldiers. And in evidence, too, is
the "chippy wagon," a trailer in which
the girls can move from camp to
camp, according to the vagaries of
the law and the payday.

In Fayetteville there are many
"houses" and also a large number of
unattached girls. The latter work in
the hotels and get slightly higher
prices than the houses, probably be-

THE SEXUAL HISTORY OF THE WORLD WAR 343

cause the overhead is higher. Many
of the girls are youngsters of 15 or 16.

Most men with army experience
will remember the social hygiene lec-
tures at training camps, in the course
of which they were told, in case of
exposure, to look for the green light
of the prophylactic station. In Fay-
etteville the station has a green neon
sign reading "Army Dispensary."

Few girls are seen pounding the
pavement. They depend largely on
cab drivers and pimps to bring in
the business. Since the prostitutes
stay off the streets, the townspeople
are sore at the soldiers for the number
of "insults" offered to respectable
girls. In fact, to be seen with a
soldier amounts to social ostracism in
Fayetteville, a condition which by no
means holds in other towns near the
camps.

It's a little different at Camp Stew-
art, Ga., where New York's highly
polished 7th Regiment is quartered.
Most of these soldiers, many of whom
bear New York's oldest names, have
been used to mixing with only the
best in Manhattan. In Georgia they
are stuck in the wilderness, 45 miles
from Savannah, and transportation is
inadequate.

Savannah, of course, has the usual
brothel facilities, but the city and its
residents, awake to the social import-
ance of the swanky 7th, have leaped
into the breach with a service club.
Financed partly by municipal funds,
conducted in the armory, the club
gives dances, properly chaperoned.
The club also serves meals and sup-
plies inexpensive lodging. As many
as 2,000 New York boys attend the
club over week ends.

At Fort McClellan, near Anniston,
Ala., there are more New Yorkers,
from the 27th. Major Gen. William
N. Haskell here early exhibited the
iron fist. First he threatened to put
all of Anniston "off limits" unless the
bordellos were kept within reasonable
numbers. He has posted military po-

lice at hotels and houses under sus-
picion and has placed the city of
Birmingham, which is well supplied
with bawdy houses, off limits.

"DEFORE the 27th moved in, the
D local authorities rounded up all
the prostitutes in Anniston and had
them inspected for venereal diseases.
Most were found afflicted and run out
of town, but since then squadrons of
new girls have arrived.

Many of the girls use the hit-run
technique, operating in taxis and pri-
vate cars, which in a lot of cases are
used as the working quarters.

There is a 10:30 P. M. bed check
in McClellan, meaning everyone has
to be in by that time except on
Saturday. This has brought a great
deal of grumbling about "concentra-
tion camps."

The venereal disease rate for the
county in which the camp is situated
is quite high and there were numer-
ous cases in camp shortly after the
New Yorkers arrived. This has re-
sulted in a fright for the soldiers,
which is just what the Army wants.

At Fort Benning, Ga., where the
Army goes in for advanced training
and maintains its infantry school,
steps have been taken to keep prosti-
tution under pretty rigid control in
Columbus, Ga., the nearest town. The
girls are rounded up regularly and
the houses are shut down.

But across the Chattahoochee River
from Columbus is Phoenix City, Ala.,
which is a honky-tonk town rivalling
the worst of the old Tenderloins. In
this neighborhood, vice is an industry,
operators sometimes inheriting houses
from fathers and grandfathers.

The industry is not strictly con-
trolled by a gang in the metropolitan
sense of the word, but no outsider
can muscle in, and the honky-tonk
crowd has politics under a firm bridle.

344 THE SEXUAL HISTORY OF THE WORLD WAR

The places vary from fairly inno-
cent juke joints to establishments in
which nothing is a surprise. The juke
joints, of course, are places — maybe a
tar-paper shack, maybe more elabor-
ate— that house a nickel phonograph,
a drink counter and a bevy of "wait-
resses." Sometimes the girls are
strictly waitresses, sometimes "host-
esses" who get a cut on the drinks
they encourage customers to buy, and
sometimes they are just plain prosti-
tutes.

The biggest place in the region is
frequented almost entirely by soldiers.
It is a large courtyard flanked _ by
shacks on the sides where the girls,
numbering about 20, ply their pro-
fession.

Phoenix City is really a tough
town. Proprietors of the joints all
carry guns and maintain staffs of
gorillas. A soldier who kicks at the
price of a drink or a woman is in a
very perilous spot indeed. Phoenix
City impresarios would rather shoot
or hit than argue. There have been
deaths among the soldiers who visit
the town.

In addition to the juke joints, there

are plenty of brothels in Phoenix

City, and the pimps cross the river to

solicit the soldiers in Columbus. One

house, overcrowded by the boom,_had

in one room two double beds, a single

bed and a cot, all of which frequently

are in use at the same time.

* * *

'"TWELVE miles outside Hatties-
■*■ burg, Miss., is Fort Shelby The
town has experienced an upswing in
business that has sent matters beyond
control of local authorities. As in
most of the other towns near camps,
not only is there a rush of soldiers,
but a flood of workmen employed in
government construction. This pro-
vides a double problem, because the
workmen must find sleeping quarters
and the prostitutes must have places
to work.

Every room in Hattiesburg is filled,
some containing sleepers in shifts. On

pay nights, some of the hotels turn
into warrens of prostitution.

Surrounding the camp are a hun-
dred or more juke joints which the
itinerant pavement-pounders use as
headquarters. In one little town near
the camp, McLaurin by name, there
are a post office, two houses and 25
juke joints.

Joints Full of
Pretty Waitresses.

McLaurin is only five minutes walk
from the camp gate and the joints are
full of pretty waitresses, some of
whom do not go outside with the
soldiers.

McLaurin is important to this story
from one standpoint. It shows the
operation of Army control of vice.
The girls in the juke joints sell soda
and candy and sandwiches and there-
fore come under an ordinance en-
forced jointly by the Army and the
county health authorities. They must
submit every 15 days to a health ex-
amination and they carry cards with
blue stamps that indicate they are
healthy.

A red stamp on the card keeps a
girl out of any of the places. If a
girl with a red stamp is found in a
juke joint, the place is put off limits,
with an M. P. at the door.

Such a development means financial
death to the proprietor, so the joints
themselves police the girls. The Army
is not officially "licensing" the girls,
merely seeing that food is served by
clean people. But actually it amounts
to the highly-debated official inspec-
tion.

Not unlike the McLaurin situation
is the one existing in Pensacola, Fla.,
near which Fort Barrancas and the
Naval Air Station are set up. In
Pensacola, the military and civil au-
thorities have invoked an old law
under which a house in which an
infected prostitute is found can be
quarantined.

THE SEXUAL HISTORY

OF THE WORLD WAR 345

Bascom Johnson, director of the
Legal and Social Protection Division
of the Office of the Federal Co-ordi-
nator of Defense Activities of the
Federal Security Administration, is
not inclined toward licensing or segre-
gation of prostitutes. Because, John-
son says, experience has proved that
neither is a cure for the evil.

"The one way to deal with the
problem is to attack it directly," he
said, "and that doesn't mean attack-
ing the prostitutes but fighting the
racketeers who make money out of it.
We are going to make prostitution an
unprofitable racket.

"The whole question is a compli-
cated social, legal and health problem.
The Government is going to rely on
local authorities in the fight and will
assist with grants of money to carry
on the battle."

He pointed out that the major aim
is not suppression, but prevention.
That's where the juke joints come in.
The poorly paid girls are easily led
into selling themselves. A lot can
be accomplished by insuring decent
working conditions for them.

Leading an assault on strongholds
of vice is nothing new to Johnson.
A Yale man of the '90s, Johnson was
a major with the Sanitary Corps in
the last war and later became law
enforcement officer for the division
of Army and Navy Training Camp
Activities. He has been an associate
director of the American Social Hy-
giene Association since 1918.

TyHILE civil agencies are attempt-
' ing to deal with the problem
outside the military reservations, the
Army and Navy will work on the
men. A major element of disease
control in the services lies in the
provision of wholesome feminine com-
panionships and organized recreation.

Those concerned with control have
discovered that about 15% of the
men will expose themselves no matter
what is done to prevent it; another

15% won't take any risk at all. That
leaves 70% who will take a chance
if driven to it by boredom, and those
are the ones to worry about.

"If we provide them with decent
leisure-time activities," Johnson said,
"they will be all right."

He recalled an incident that recently
occurred in one of Washington's
smartest hotels, when a waiter re-
fused to serve a sergeant in uniform
in the hotel's cocktail bar, declaring
it was against the management's
policy. The soldier protested and
there was a considerable row, as a
result of which the hotel apologized
to the soldier and the Army, stating
that Army and Navy men were spe-
cially welcomed.

This pleased Johnson hugely.

Another who was pleased was Fred-
erick Osburn, who is chairman of the
Joint Army and Navy Committee on
Welfare and Recreation. He is liaison
officer between the War and Navy
Departments and the Social Security
and Public Health Administrations.

Osburn's job is to provide suitable
recreation for the soldier and sailor
and he is, in his own words, "the
prostitution opposition." Dancing,
parties, sports, movies and all forms
of healthful and constructive recrea-
tion are what he offers through the
many public and private organizations
whose activities he co-ordinates.

There is in prospect a $150,000,000
appropriation to cover these activities,
provide quarters and facilities for
them near the military establishments.

Partaking in the program, of course,
will be such organizations as the
Y. M. C. A., the National Catholic
Alliance, the Jewish Welfare Council
and the Salvation Army, whose proj-
ect is under way now with the direc-
tion of Walter Hoving, New York
merchant. With the title United Serv-
ice Organization, these groups will
raise $10,000,000 which will be used

346 THE SEXUAL HISTORY

outside any Government appropria-
tion.

All over the country, too, civic
groups are gathering to provide en-
tertainment for service men. Savan-
nah has been mentioned. In Rich-
mond, Va., patriotic girls are mo-
bilized for Saturday night dances at
Camp Lee. In Santa Barbara the
cream of the social crop is trans-
ported on Saturdays to Santa Maria,
where the Army trains fliers. On
Long Island, towns near Mitchel Field
provide local girls for dances there.

OF THE WORLD WAR

It's the same everywhere in the vi-
cinity of concentrations of troops.

In every way possible, the Govern-
ment and its best available adminis-
trators are trying to make the Army
and the Navy not only happy, but
healthy. The venereal disease rates
in the services have dropped from
more than 200 per thousand in 1867
to the present rate of fewer than 30
per thousand. And the Army and the
Navy don't intend to let the rate rise
again — they want healthy soldiers and
sailors, and so do the folk back home.

PISL-U

COM M ON WEALTH OF PENNSYLVANIA
DEPARTMENT OF PUBLIC INSTRUCTION

STATE LIBRARY

392.6 HARRISBURG H 616

In case of failure to return the books the borrower agrees to pay the original price
of the same, or to replace them with other copies. The last borrower is held respon-
sible for any mutilation. ...
Return this book on or before the last date stamped below. ^^,8400

MY " 7 f»r

JUL 161969

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Full text of "The sexual history of the World War. [From reports collected by the Institute for Sexual Science]"

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